Because you were waiting
by Blood-Magic
Summary: Shortly after the events of "Advent Children: Final Fantasy VII", Vincent Valentine finds himself deep in the northern mountains as he struggles with his guilt over past mistakes. While there, he happens across a very strange crystal, with a very strange young woman trapped inside... Rated T for minor language, some violence, and some themes unsuitable for children.
1. Chapter 1: Buried alive

The dark-haired man lifted his face a little out of the top of his crimson wool mantle and took in a deep breath. The back of his throat stung with the crisp mountain air, but he felt refreshed anyway. He was high up in the crystalline, snow-packed mountains, far away from society, away from everything that ever reminded him of that day. That sharp, fateful day that not even time had been able to dull.

Vincent lowered his head then, averted his eyes away from the sky. He didn't deserve to look at that beautiful, eternally stretching sky, when _she_ would never be able to see it again. Was her spirit somewhere up in that sky? Her body was trapped in a stasis between life and death; did her soul yet cling to her crystallized flesh, or had it found some way to escape? Over and again he had whispered, cried, screamed his prayer to the sky that _she_ had found some peace after all. The sky never answered; it just kept stretching on, as vast and empty as ever.

With overflowing tears – tears he had held too long in check before his friends – Vincent turned away from the bright, cloudless sky and trudged back into the mountaintop cave he was using for a camp. It wasn't a long walk back, but every step seemed to weigh his heart down further. Snow clung to his boots and made his every step heavier, more awkward. Vincent narrowed his eyes at the ground, as if to accuse the snow of mocking the same heavy feeling he carried inside.

When he entered his cave, he blinked to adjust to the sudden low light. Something in the cave felt amiss. It was cooler than usual, uncomfortably so. Normally, warm air rose up from somewhere deep in the mountain to counterbalance the cold from the cave's mouth, but Vincent wasn't feeling that warmth anymore. Had there been a cave-in?

It was a good thing he had thought to bring that woolen greatcoat. His normal red mantle and cloak kept him warm enough during the day, but it wouldn't be safe to rely on them alone after the sun went down. He decided to throw the greatcoat around his shoulders and investigate the depths of his mountain cave camp.

Lucky for him, his cave system was a single twisting tunnel with no offshoots, or at least none that were big enough to admit a man's passage. As a result he didn't have to worry about getting lost or turned around. In some parts the ceiling, which was little more than a sheet of thick ice, thinned out enough to cast an eerie bluish tint over the glittering ice and rock below. The effect was beautiful, if eerie, but it reminded Vincent too much of _her_ crystal prison. He kept his eyes down and kept moving forward.

In the fourth, or perhaps fifth cavern from his camp, the ceiling had thickened again and the light was much dimmer. Here the ice grew in slick stalagmites and stalactites, some of which were so large and thick that they formed complete pillars from top to bottom. There were large ice crystals with wide facets like alien flowers sitting quietly in most of the corners and crannies of the cave.

In the very center, there was the most magnificent crystal of all. It blossomed up from the ground like a jagged blue rose, its edges glinting dangerously even in the poor light. But there was something strange about it; its outer edges were translucent and glowing but its core was dark, far darker than Vincent had expected. And the dark core had a peculiar shape that he couldn't put his finger on.

He laid his hand on one of the "rose's" outer petals, then drew back instantly as he realized that the ice crystal was not ice at all, but a literal crystal, and it was warm. It was emanating a heat that must have originated within itself, for there was no other source in the cave. Had all the heat in his cave come from this crystal? That would explain why the stalactites all looked damp. But why did it cool down? Vincent laid his hand on the crystal's surface again.

As he held his hand there, the crystal began to crack, splitting at the edges of every petal like a suit with every seam torn out at once. The cracking was loud, and it echoed against the icy chamber, to the point that Vincent was sure his ears would bleed and his skull would split. The noise was so great that the snow on the outside of the cavern fell away in an avalanche. The sun shone through the ice ceiling brighter now, and Vincent could see just what was really waiting in the core of the now-shattered crystal.

It was a woman. A beautiful woman with long, slender limbs and strawberry blondish hair. Despite the fact that she was wearing uncomfortable-looking plate mail, she seemed to be sleeping peacefully on a throne inside the giant split crystal. At the sight of her, Vincent averted his eyes. She didn't look like _her_, but the situation was too similar for him to take. He had failed _her,_ with disastrous result. Was this woman before him the victim of someone else's failure? And how long had she been made to suffer for those sins of the past? With eyes still turned away from the collapsing crystal prison, Vincent backed up against one of the ice pillars. He gripped his head with both hands and tried to shut out both the noise and the memories.

When the crystal shards stopped crashing to the ground and the cavern was once again still, Vincent finally looked up at the woman in the chair. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was level; she was still asleep, somehow. Though he probably should have thought better of it, he approached her. Her face looked so familiar. It was as though he had seen her countless times before, but when he wracked his memory he couldn't pinpoint from where he might have known her. With his unarmored hand, Vincent reached out to her and prodded her gingerly in the arm.

Her eyes flew open. Vincent pulled his hand away and backed off a step.

She looked around for a second and then fixed her big blue eyes on Vincent's face.

"Where's Serah?" she demanded.

Vincent of course had no idea who or what Serah was. "I don't—" he began.

The woman rose up from her throne with lightning speed and drove Vincent backward with her arm until his back hit the ice pillar. "_Where is Serah?_" she asked again, her voice deadly. It occurred to Vincent that he had only been pushed back because of her speed and his surprise. After sleeping inside that crystal for however-long, she had very little physical strength at her disposal. Well, at least he'd be able to contain her if she got really violent. Especially if he considered that the bladed weapon that was in her lap had skittered across the floor and was now out of her reach.

"Sorry," he told her. "I don't know anything about Serah. It's just you here."

The woman searched Vincent's face for signs of deception, but there were none to find. Then a look of surprise and shock swept over her features and she staggered away, holding her head in her hands much like Vincent had only a few minutes before. Her legs buckled and she fell to her knees, leaning against the crystal throne as she cried out in pain.

"Serah," she called, while a tear ran down either cheek. She kept repeating that name, Serah, over and again. "I'm…I'm sorry, Serah."

"Er," Vincent began, gently as he could manage with his voice raspy from disuse and chill air. "Who's Serah?"

The woman looked back over her shoulder at the man who had woken her from her crystal slumber. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. "My sister," she finally answered. She sniffled involuntarily and turned her face away. Vincent shifted his weight away from the ice pillar at his back and took a tentative step forward.

"Where is she?" was all he could think to say.

But the woman just shook her head and swallowed hard. "My sister is gone. Because of me. Because I couldn't protect her." She beat her balled fist helplessly against the seat of the throne while her tears continued to flow.

_Because I couldn't protect her,_ the words echoed endlessly in Vincent's mind. Without thinking, he walked up to the distraught woman, slipped the greatcoat off his shoulders and wrapped it around hers. She lifted her face and stared at him questioningly. As he wiped away one of her tears it seemed to her that his eyes bore the same deep pain and loss as her own.

So, Vincent thought, it was she who had failed someone else. He, Vincent, knew the pain of that sort of failure intimately. He pulled the lapels of the greatcoat a little tighter around her slender frame and then backed off awkwardly.

"Thank you," she whispered hoarsely as her hand rose up to hold the edges of the coat in place. He made a slight nod in response.

"What's your name?" he asked her as gently as before. The woman opened her mouth and then balked, like she couldn't remember what people used to call her. But that sentiment seemed to last for only a moment, and then she answered.

"Lightning."

The man nodded. "I'm Vincent," he replied. "Come on, let's get out of this cavern." He helped Lightning to her feet and picked up her blade from the other side of the cavern. "I've got a camp further up this tunnel," he told her as he slowly led the way out of the ice caverns.

"How long have I been asleep?" she wondered aloud as they walked through the icy tunnels. "I don't remember any of this."

"I couldn't tell you," Vincent answered simply. He jumped up to a ledge and leaned back down to pull Lightning up. Her armor was heavy, but still considerably lighter than he had expected. "I've never seen armor or a weapon like yours before. I don't know if you've been asleep for a _very_ long time, or if you're just not from around here…"

Lightning shrugged. "I guess I'll have to find out more when we get back to civilization." She paused. "There _is_ a civilization to go back to, right?"

"You could call it that," Vincent answered slowly while he thought about it. "Every couple of years an experiment goes wrong and someone with silver hair tries to obliterate the Planet, but we have crossword puzzles on our cell phones."

Lightning stood there for a moment, staring at Vincent like he was insane. Even after he turned away, it took a moment for her to recover her wits and follow him up the tunnel. "Crossword puzzles," she muttered with sarcastic venom. "Cute."

The camp was too bright for both of them after the darkness of the caverns. But even the pain in her eyes couldn't stop Lightning from running across the cave floor to the exit. Shielding her eyes with her arm she stared out in wonder at the snow-capped peaks around them. Questions floated about in her mind. Why had she been inside the mountain? How did she get there? But the question she wanted to ask most required her to turn back to face Vincent.

"How did you find me up here?"

He drew level with her and looked out over the mountaintops. "I come here sometimes. When I need to get away from, anything really. It was by chance that I chose for my camp the cave with your crystal." Was it really chance? Or had fate drawn him to this spot? Vincent shook his head rather than give voice to something as foolish as fate. They stood in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

"How long will it take to reach the nearest town?" Lightning's quiet voice broke the silence.

Vincent considered. "Probably three days, if we make good time." He checked the shadows. "It's too late to start today. We'll leave first thing in the morning." Vincent turned and walked back deeper into the cave.

"We?" she called back to him, the surprise as clear in her voice as it was on her face. Vincent knelt beside his half-empty rucksack and prepared to re-pack his camping supplies.

"It's about time I returned," he said with a resigned sigh as he pulled out a spare pair of gloves and packed a flashlight in their place. "I'm sure there's a summon tearing Midgar apart as it is."

_A summon tearing Midgar apart?_ The woman took a moment to think about this. Midgar sounded like a place, and if there was something large and powerful and summoned enough to tear it apart, it would have to be an eidolon. So they were simply called 'summons' in this new time and place?

"Silver-haired men trying to destroy the Planet, summons destroying cities. Sounds like this world is all but in love with crisis," Lightning wondered aloud. Vincent gave her a wry smile.

"Perhaps. But you look like you can handle a little crisis."

She turned and walked back into the cave. "Yeah, I handled it really well last time," she muttered, barely audible to Vincent's ears.

Vincent alternated between packing supplies and staring blankly out into the emptiness of the space outside the cave exit. By the time he finished his simple task, the sunset had come and gone. The mountains had gone from blinding white to fiery orange to rosy pink to muted lavender. All these colors and more had filtered into the camp, dulled by their reflection off the grey rocks,but their silent march calmed his spirit, even as his physical body remained tense as he considered how to proceed.

He would deliver Lightning safely to Edge, that much he knew for certain. But where to from there? Where could he take her where she would be safe? Did she even need his protection? She looked capable enough. He stole a glance her way; she looked like a valkyrie from one of his old books. An angel of battle and death, a fierce warrior who could hold her own against any horde of men or beasts. In a test of battle, Vincent had no doubt she would emerge victorious.

Even so, it wouldn't do to simply bring her to highway outside of Edge and leave her.

He'd take her to Seventh Heaven, he decided. Tifa had a good sensible head on her shoulders; she'd know what to do. After that he was sure he couldn't remain involved, but he'd see his charge to safety. He put his mostly-packed rucksack aside and looked up.


	2. Chapter 2: All Alone

Lightning was leaning up against one of the cave walls. She seemed completely lost in her own thoughts. Vincent fished a couple of protein bars out of the rucksack and held them out to her. She started when he approached and then a perplexed expression colored her familiar features as she regarded the bars.

"Sorry I don't have real food up here," he told her as she took them at last. "But these will help you keep your strength up for now."

"Thank you," she nodded and she began to peel the wrapper from the first bar. She took a tentative bite and slowly began chewing. She continued chewing as she watched Vincent return to the other side of the cave and sit down with his back against a boulder. "Why were you up here anyway?" she asked after her first swallow.

"I told you; to get away."

Lightning didn't say anything, but she stared pointedly. Vincent looked away and silently refused to offer any more information. She took another bite of the protein bar before venturing to speak again.

"What were you running from?" she finally asked.

Without meeting her gaze, "You're not the only one who's lost someone they couldn't protect." Lightning's eyes grew wide.

"I'm sorry, I—"

"Don't worry about it," he said stiffly. Silence stretched between them. After several minutes, during which the only sound was the wind outside the cave and Lightning's quiet chewing, Vincent spoke. "We should get some sleep soon. Tomorrow will be difficult."

"How can you possibly sleep here? It's freezing," Lightning asked. A shiver moved visibly up her spine despite the greatcoat still wrapped around her shoulders.

"Hmm. It _was_ warmer in here." Vincent explained to her that her crystal had been emitting enough warmth to keep him alive.

"But that's not an option anymore," she reasoned. "I suppose in the interest of not dying, it seems the only sensible thing left is to share body heat."

Vincent narrowed his eyes at her. "You're a bit…pointy," he said at last. Lightning made a face.

"I'm not a turtle; the armor comes off."

"Then your idea is a good and logical one," he answered.

Soon afterward, Lightning had piled all of her armor neatly beside Vincent's rucksack and his own armored boots and gauntlet. His bedroll had been built for one, but as both of them were slight, there was just room enough for both. Vincent pulled his cloak and the greatcoat over them as an additional layer of insulation. Then they bade each other good night and lay, huddled in the silent darkness, attempting to sleep, too tense to actually fall asleep, and each willing the other to nod off first.

Vincent would never have liked to admit it, but there was a mysterious comfort in Lightning's presence at his side. Right at that moment, he could forget how little he knew about her, how little he could reasonably trust her. Instead he could shut out all the trivia of his abnormal existence and focus on the simple pleasure of being warm for the first time in far too long. It took all his willpower not to wrap both arms around her and curve his body into hers. He almost gave in and did it anyway, but stopped himself; what right did he have to make her uncomfortable by grabbing at her in the dark? None whatsoever, and so he silently held himself in check, no matter how desperate his temptation.

Lightning had no awareness of her bunkmate's turmoil, but that did nothing to dispel the tension in her body and mind. Generally speaking, she was not one to brood too much over things beyond her control. But alone, in the dark, with nothing before her but more of the same sleep she had endured for who-knew-how-many eons, she couldn't help but wonder if it was worth it to keep living. Lightning shivered; she had lived her life for her sister, had pulled countless souls into her quest to keep Serah safe. And she had ultimately failed in that most basic and critical of quests. And so she had fallen asleep in a crystal time capsule, to slumber on as a silent testament to her purpose and her failure, as a monument to her beloved sister's memory.

Instead of remaining encased for an eternity, she had woken up to Vincent. Why? He couldn't possibly have any connection to her or her sister, could he? Why he would help her without question was beyond Lightning's comprehension; there had to be something he wanted, some ulterior motive, or some information he was withholding.

There was nothing to do for it now. She would have to discover what she could before they reached civilization, and from there she would work out another plan. Vincent's breathing slowed and evened; he was asleep. Lightning tentatively began relaxing her muscles, though she still felt uneasy. She tensed up again every time he twitched a muscle, even held her breath when he shifted his weight.

It was going to be impossible to sleep, she thought. She lay still, on her side facing away from the sleeping man beside her, trying not to move too much so as not to disturb him. She was also trying to avoid chafing her skin on the leather underpadding she had worn beneath her plate mail. That leather was serving as the closest thing she had to pajamas, but it could get monstrously uncomfortable if she allowed herself to move too much in the tight space.

Vincent made a sound in his sleep, like one of those involuntary moans that sometimes happens while stretching. Lightning's breath stopped and there was a second of perfect silence in the cave. Then, "Lu-Lucre-cia," he mumbled. "'s not- your—" He made another sound that might have been the final word of his sleep-sentence, but it was muffled and slurred and Lightning could make no sense of it.

Lucrecia; that's what he said first. It sounded like a woman's name. Who was she? She had to be important, if he was talking to her – apologizing to her? – in his sleep. That name continued to float through Lightning's thoughts even as the moon waned, the night grew old, and she finally started to drift off herself.

She dreamed she was standing in a summer forest that strongly resembled the jungles of Sunleth. The ground below her was mossy and springy, the air warm and humid, there were tiny red flans flowing and bobbing up and down the boughs of every tree like fat red banana slugs, and Serah was sitting on a rock, humming a song as though she had not a care in the world. Lost in her own wandering thoughts, her finger twirled round the chain of a silver pendant hanging from her neck; 'twas the very pendant Lightning had first come to despise, then lovingly accept, as the symbol of Serah's engagement to Snow. That young woman had grown up so well and so beautifully, Lightning thought with a wistful smile, but she only looked small and innocent as she sat on that rock, as she had in the days before their lives were turned inside out and upside down. As it was a dream, it did not even occur to Lightning to question the incongruent appearance of her younger sister as innocent as a barely-teenaged girl, yet still carrying the pendant that marked the start of her life as an adult.

"Hey, Sis," Serah called when she turned her head and saw Lightning standing there.

Without a word, Lightning ran to her sister and pulled her into a tight hug. Tears of joy at their reunion welled in her eyes, and she did not try, even for a moment, to hold them in check.

"What's gotten into you?" the younger woman asked as she tentatively returned the embrace. The older sister let go of the hug and held the younger out at arm's length, as though scrutinizing her.

There was a rustle behind Lightning's head. She turned and saw Caius standing there with crossed arms and a stern set to his brow and mouth. His head was tilted so that he was looking at her almost entirely through a screen of purple hair. Suddenly his mouth quirked up into a crooked smile.

"Good to see you," he greeted.

"Go to hell," was Lightning's immediate and only response. Caius chuckled.

"I'm already there," he answered, tilting his head to face her directly. "And it looks like you are, too. Must be agonizing, knowing your sister is trapped in this place and there was nothing you could do to stop it."

"Shut up," Lighting warned. Her grip on Serah's shoulders tightened.

Then Caius's face stretched out of shape into a nightmarish caricature of itself. Black shot through his purple hair and all his beads and feathers fell to the ground. His left hand suddenly became a gold, clawed gauntlet and before Lightning was even fully aware of what she was seeing, Caius had morphed entirely into Vincent.

The new Vincent's eyes were darkened with indescribable despair as he gazed at the two sisters. Those eyes fixed on Lightning's own.

"Lucrecia…" he whispered hoarsely, and he reached out to her with his clawed hand.

_What?_

Lightning awoke with a violent start. The cave was dark yet, but outside the morning sunlight on the snow was blinding. Somehow she had gotten herself turned around in her sleep; she was facing Vincent now, though she was certain she had fallen asleep with her back to him. Her arm was draped over and around his torso in what amounted to the laziest one-armed hug.

She pulled her arm off and away from him and curled it back into her chest. Heat rose in her cheeks and she was glad the cave was so dark; even if Vincent had been awake, he wouldn't have been able to see her blush. He wasn't awake to see her, but she bent her neck in anyway, keeping her face averted from his own. The mild, bittersweet scent of sweat and leather and warmth clung to the edge of the blanket. Lightning was content to lay there and breathe it in while she waited for Vincent to wake up and provide her with an excuse to leave the comfort of the bedroll. In the mean time, she contemplated last night's dream.

Caius Ballad had turned into Vincent. What was the meaning of that? Perhaps there was no connection, only that Caius was one of the last men she saw before she took to her crystal, and Vincent was the first since her awakening.

But what if there _was_ a connection? The thought gnawed on the edges of her mind like a dog worrying at a bone. Vincent's touch shattered her crystal and woke her from a sleep that was supposed to have been eternal. And what's more, she could sense a deep wellspring of dark power in him. He had kept it well masked before, but in the quiet between waking hours, that power was like a wild animal awakening from hibernation; it stretched and yawned and lifted its head warily to sniff the air, and it was then that Lightning could feel its presence. She had no idea what it was, only that it had a dark origin, and that it was so ingrained into Vincent's being that the two could never be separated. But was that power in any way related to Caius, or to those long-buried events? Lightning couldn't tell.

She knew she had little time to figure it out; Vincent estimated three days to the nearest town, and while she could reasonably expect him to remain at her side for those three days, she had no guarantee that he would stick around after that. If there was something special about him, if that dark power she sensed in him was in any way related to Caius or to anyone else from her time, she had to find out quickly. Her eyes drifted up, to his sleeping face. Even through the unruly black locks that partially screened his face from view, he looked peaceful. He looked as if there was no such dark power in him at all, no tragic past about 'someone he couldn't protect', nothing that suggested at the guilt and despair that had forced him up into the mountains in the first place.

Lightning held herself still and let him sleep on; she was in no particular mood to rush back to town.


	3. Chapter 3: Caught in Another Storm

Traveling down the steep mountain was miserable for poor Lightning. Her metal armor stole the warmth from her bones and squeaked angrily with her every movement. The feathered cape on her faulds protected the back of her legs from the wind, but the front of her thighs above the edges of her cuisses were not so lucky. Within minutes, every inch of exposed skin was red and nearly numb. Brittle snow packed itself into every joint of her armor; the chunks closest to her skin melted into uncomfortable and inconsistent rivulets that started to itch when they seeped between her skin and her leathers.

But she was too stubborn to complain. Too proud even to ask her traveling companion to slow his pace. Of course, Vincent realized the problem on his own within the first hour of walking.

"It's heavy, but it will keep you warm," he grunted as he pulled the wool greatcoat from its place atop the rucksack and handed it over with both hands.

The bedraggled young woman pushed back a sweaty hank of her strawberry hair – perhaps 'raspberry' was a better word, thought Vincent, as he noticed her hair was truly pink in direct sunlight – and took the coat without a word. She twisted it around until it sat comfortably around her shoulders, pulled her hair out from under the collar and did up the top three or so buttons to hold it in place so she could keep her hands free.

"Thanks," she said shortly when she finished positioning the coat. Her companion nodded and turned back to the trail, such as it was: the so-called "trail" was a steep alpine game run that no creatures other than dogs, wild chocobos, or mountain cats should have been allowed to travel without climbing equipment. The steadily warming Lightning began picking her way after Vincent's sure-footed steps.

"Where are we going again?" she called after him, though it strained her throat to speak against the wind.

"In a day or two we'll reach the Forgotten Capital," he replied over his shoulder. "If the weather holds. Then it's about as long to Midgar and Edge, but an easy straight shot."

"And from there to where?" Lightning asked.

Vincent balked. He had decided to bring his companion to his friend Tifa, but he had no idea where, if anywhere, he planned to take her afterward.

"I don't know," he admitted.

Lightning squinted at him through the snow-blind. "You have friends in Midgar then," she reasoned.

"Nobody has friends in Midgar. But I have a few in Edge that you would like." Vincent turned back to the trail, but his breakneck pace slowed to a crawl as he regarded the clouds and the scent on the wind. Lightning took the opportunity to draw level with him. She said nothing but fixed her gaze first on the clouds, then on the man. Her head tilted and betrayed her silent inquiry.

"Storm's coming," Vincent explained. Lightning squinted at the innocent-looking clouds.

"How long?" she asked. Her companion took a moment to perform some mental calculation.

"Three hours. Maybe four. Maybe less; it's headed toward us, and we're headed toward it." He paused again. "There's another cave to the south."

"Can we get there before the storm hits?" was Lightning's next logical question. Vincent shook his head.

"Only if you can fly," came his grave answer as he started hiking again. Lightning had to jog to keep up with his long strides, but somehow she managed to stay within three steps of him no matter where he followed the haphazard icy trail.

The storm came on sooner than Vincent had anticipated. They weren't halfway to their cave shelter when the first snowflakes hit. Lightning was just considering how lucky they were that the flakes were dry and powdery rather than wet and heavy when they were abruptly pelted by sharp, raindrop-sized beads of hail. The two huddled together, covering their heads with Lightning's circular shield. Their pace slowed to a crawl as Vincent tried in vain to see their trail through the sheets of hail and the windswept flurries of recent snow.

He gave up trying to see and just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as he thought about what to do. There was no visibility, so the safest thing to do in terms of not getting lost would be to hunker down and wait the storm out. But his thoughts turned to Lightning. She wasn't wearing enough layers for the weather in these mountains, he knew immediately. Her platemail was useful against enemies but not at all against temperatures, her leathers were useful where she had them but they did not cover a sufficient percentage of her body, and the greatcoat was open on the bottom, which left her legs especially susceptible to upward wind drafts. Vincent himself could wait the storm out and survive, however uncomfortably, but Lightning would almost certainly catch hypothermia long before the hail let up. That was assuming she didn't have hypothermia now. He had to keep her blood flowing to her extremities, had to keep her moving as long as possible.

He would not fail her. He had known enough of this sort of failure to last two lifetimes.

And so the two plodded on, in a generally downward and southward direction, praying against all logic that Vincent had overestimated the distance to the cave.

"Ho ho! Who's there now?" a voice called out to them across the flurries. Vincent and Lightning stopped in their tracks and peeked their heads out from under the shield.

Before the weary travelers stood the strangest man either of them had yet seen. He was enormously fat and short, to the point that he resembled a grape more than any man at all. That appearance was only accentuated by the fact that he was wearing a deep purple robe that covered his feet and made him look even rounder. His beard was long and white as the snow around him. The old grape-man waved at the pair with a hand that held the shaft a polished wooden shillelagh. His other hand would have waved as well, but since it was busy holding onto the reins of several bridled green chocobos, it only bobbed a little with the rest of his round little body.

Lightning's face contorted in surprise at the sudden appearance of the stranger, but Vincent only breathed a sigh of relief. He knew this eccentric old fellow, a being so ancient as to have forgotten his own name, but to Vincent and his friends he was called the Chocobo Sage. That the Sage happened to be in the area could very well have just saved the travelers' lives. Vincent wasted no time in running to the man and greeting him as heartily as he could manage. The suspicious young woman was much more cautious in her approach, but she eventually drew level with her companion just as he and the bulbous old man were completing their salutations.

"And who is this lovely young lady?" the Chocobo Sage asked in his high-pitched voice as he squinted at Lightning from under the brim of his wide hat. Vincent moved to introduce her.

"This is Lightning," he told the Sage as he indicated the woman with a hand gesture. The motion was exaggerated compared to his normal body language, and Lightning noted that his volume had been louder than normal. Well, she reasoned, this was a _very_ old man. Perhaps his sight and hearing were not so sharp as they had once been.

"Lightning, heh?" repeated the Sage. "Well I'll be, mister Valentine, you certainly found yourself a pretty little wife indeed." The Chocobo Sage cackled, Vincent paled, and Lightning herself blushed and turned her face to the side.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not his wife," Lightning said after an awkward moment of silence but for the continuing hail around them. The Sage cackled again and tapped his nose with the knob of his shillelagh.

"Engaged then, but it's close enough," he answered with a wink. Vincent shook his head and changed the subject.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked the Sage.

"What was I doing out here, I wonder..." then he noticed the chocobos at his side. "Oh yes, I was walking the birds. But it's about time to go inside, a real bother of a storm we've got ourselves into!" The Sage regarded the freezing couple. "Why don't you both come over for dinner, it would be good to have company again. Goodness knows I can't remember the last time I had a visitor!"

Vincent and Lightning accepted the Sage's offer with as much haste as they could manage with mouths made clumsy and numb by the freezing wind.

The Sage hopped up onto the back of the chocobo nearest him. "Climb aboard, we'll need to ride these fellas to get home!" The travelers readily complied. "And hold on!" he called back as all four of the green chocobos took off, racing so quickly over the snow-packed cliffs and ravines that Lightning was sure she was really flying, though in reality she was uncertain if she was flying or running and she suspected it was a combination of the two. This feeling was quickly supplanted by a question as to how the ill-sighted Chocobo Sage could even see the correct path to take him home. Then again, maybe the chocobos were as anxious to get home and away from the storm as their riders and could tell the way by themselves.

After about twenty minutes during which it seemed the chocobos ran or flew as many miles, the party crested the last ridge and found themselves looking down upon a log cabin in the middle of a calm valley.

"Ho ho! There it is, my friends!" the Chocobo Sage called back to his guests. "Almost home now!" The group took their tired mountain chocobos down this final slope much more slowly, for though the birds were anxious and excited to be home, they were worn out from their swift flight from that terrible hailstorm. As they cleared the snowline and entered the green valley surrounding the cabin, Vincent's tense shoulders visibly loosened and he seemed to breathe easy for the first time since before the storm had hit.

The old Chocobo Sage's little ranch was more full than Vincent had ever seen it. Green and black chocobos dominated the pasture beside the house, but there were a few of other colors. Splashes of blue, pink, and red showed every now and then through the ranks, and a number of yellow chicks chased each other in rampant circles around a well pump. There was not a moment of silence in the yard, between the cheeps of the chicks, the throaty warking of the adults, and always, the incessant scratching of clawed bird feet on the dirt as chocobos of all ages rooted for greens and grubs.

"Ho ho!" the Sage called out as he led the procession into the ranch. All across the pasture, birds raised their heads, tilted them to better see the approaching party, then warked in excitement as they recognized the voice and face of their caretaker. All at once the Sage and his guests were swarmed by chocobo beaks all searching their every pocket and cranny looking for treats of greens.

"Oh here you go you big babies," the Sage admonished fondly as he fished some of the precious greens out of his pockets and threw them to the impatient birds. He turned back and started, visibly bobbing up from his seat, as he seemed to see Vincent and Lightning for the first time.

"Ho ho! Well then, what have we here?" he said all of a sudden. "Vincent Valentine, is that you?"

Vincent and Lightning repeated their introductions. Vincent had almost expected as much at some point or other during their stay, but Lightning was absolutely perplexed. As such, she was no more prepared for the Sage's jokes about her being Vincent's wife the second time around than she was the first. Vincent, being far more prepared for such a thing, offered the rebuttal this time.

"Oh ho, married, engaged, it's all more or less the same with you young people!" the Sage cried before he shot a wink at the 'couple'. "So, honeymooning in the mountains are we? Lovely skiing up here. Nice of you to take a break from all that and visit an old man like me. I can't remember the last time I had visitors..."

Vincent and Lightning exchanged a silent glance. Her eyes spoke a mixture of perplexity and irritation at the continued misconception. The man shrugged his shoulders helplessly and they returned their attention to the Sage, who remained oblivious to the moment and continued prattling about his chocobos. Again he offered them supper, and once again they accepted.

"So tell me, mister Valentine, how ever did you meet this pretty lady?" the Chocobo Sage asked over dinner of stewed greens and chocobo meat. The day had darkened to deep blue twilight in the valley, and the three of them were seated at a rough-hewn wooden table beside a hearth with a well-fed fire. The effect was rustic and cozy and infinitely preferable to the drafty mountain caves.

"Er..." Vincent balked. He was debating the merits of telling the old Sage the truth of finding Lightning in a cave, or making up some other story. Then he remembered that it hardly mattered, as the old man would forget in a few minutes.

"We met in the mountains," Lightning supplied, when Vincent's answer was not forthcoming. The Chocobo Sage's eyes lit up at that.

"Ho ho!" he boomed as well as he could in his feeble old voice. "Up at the Icicle Inn, no doubt! Beautiful country and how romantic!"

Lightning dabbed her face with her napkin and cleared her throat. Vincent just turned his attention back to his stew.

"Oh ho, to be young again," the Chocobo Sage continued, completely oblivious to his guests' silence and discomfort with the topic at hand. "Falling in love on the slopes or by the candlelight at the Inn, or at the winter festival down on the street. The fine dining, the skiing in those sweet mountains, the colorful lanterns in the streets. There's nothing finer than a young couple in love in the snow." He was practically bobbing up and down in his chair with thinking of it all.

Lightning could hardly hold herself steady as she listened to these effusions. In the first place, she was indignant over the Chocobo Sage's pretension, assuming, despite numerous corrections, that she was bound to her traveling companion by anything more than the necessity of survival. It was not that she disliked Vincent, but she could not be certain of her ability to trust him and his dark, mysterious power that she had yet to identify. The idea that she could be married to anyone at all was a thought that caused her no small amount of discomfort, but the added fact that the someone in question was Vincent was practically alarming.

In the second place, the Sage going on about the glories of young love ultimately succeeded only in forcing Lightning to think about her baby sister and the man who would have become her brother-in-law. Despite every fight and disagreement, despite Serah's rebelliousness and Snow's brash, thoughtless actions at every turn, she still loved them both. By the end of the old man's speech, they were the only images in her thoughts. Memories of those two together, through joy and strife, and imaginings of what their wedding ought to have been flooded her mind to the point that she came dangerously close to tears. She held herself in check only by steeling her nerves and channeling her sorrow into annoyance at the Chocobo Sage himself. Somehow she managed to stop herself from snapping at the old man with either words or fists, but the gap between her current level of irritation and her record boiling point was becoming thinner every moment.

Though he kept his head low, Vincent had watched Lightning's face during the Sage's entire speech. He watched as the woman's brow furrowed and her mouth tightened, saw the moisture gather in her big blue eyes. Her knuckles whitened with tension before she removed her hands from the table and set them in her lap as though forcing herself to behave. He could not have known her truest and deepest thoughts, but he was at least observant enough to know her general distress. And so, after the Sage had finished with his excitable little speech, Vincent took it upon himself to change the subject, to inquire after some of his friends who he had expected to be in the area, and if the Sage had chanced to see them.

"Oh, I don't think so," answered the Sage as he leaned back and thought about it. "But then I might have seen them and simply don't remember." Then with a shrug, "Half the time I don't even remember whether or not I've started the stew-pot going for dinner."

Through carefully placed phrases and short questions, Vincent managed to keep the Chocobo Sage's rambling speeches contained to topics that had nothing to do with young couples in the mountains. It was a simple enough task once Vincent found the right trigger: chocobo genetics. The old Sage went on and on about selective chocobo breeding, proper plumage coloring according to the Chocobo Fanciers Association's latest guidelines, how to tell which birds were only good for eating within a day of their hatch. The weary travelers sat back and enjoyed their hot meal and let the Sage go on as long as he wanted. The only trouble with this brilliant plan was that the old man talked so long that his own dinner went cold.


	4. Chapter 4: Relative Terms

Oblivious though he was in conversation, the Chocobo Sage at least had his heart in the right place, and he spared no creature comfort for the sake of hospitality toward his two young guests. After dinner he showed them one by one to the bathroom to scrub off the dirt of the mountain trails, and meanwhile took it upon himself to set up a pair of thick, plush futons beside the fire. "Nothing like a good hearth fire up in these mountains," he squeaked with an excitable bob of his grape-like body.

When he had set up their futons, the Chocobo Sage bowed himself out of the small cabin, citing a need to address some nighttime bird chores on the pasture. He shot Vincent a sly wink as he bobbed over to the the ladder that would take him down to the chocobo barn on the ground floor of the cabin and from there to the exit. Vincent did not return the Sage's gesture, did not offer any answer at all. He let the old man go in peace, then breathed an audible sigh of relief after the front door opened and closed firmly. With the Sage and his impertinent comments gone, they both felt as though breath came easier; muscles that had been tense through dinner finally began to relax. Vincent had a tendency to store stress in his shoulders, and now with nothing to hold him on edge it seemed like every stressor of the last couple of days, mild and major alike, that he had filed in his shoulders to deal with later, suddenly came back in a sting of knotted muscular vengeance. He winced his discomfort away and tried to ignore it while he worried at the buckles of his sabatons.

They packed their armor pieces against the wall furthest from the fire, including Lightning's uncomfortable leathers, for the Chocobo Sage had thoughtfully lent her one of his flannel robes to use for pajamas. The Sage was much shorter than Lightning, and his robe only reached to about halfway down her thighs, but she appreciated the gesture and the soft flannel was certainly more comfortable than the leathers.

Now she sat on the edge of her futon combing her wet pink hair out with her fingers. She was almost certain that the oat-based shampoo the Sage had provided was actually meant for chocobos, but it did its job of removing the dirt and old sweat, and if she spent the next three days looking like a glossy show bird then so be it. Her back was to Vincent as he was making his own preparations to go to bed, which included trying to figure out his pajamas. The Chocobo Sage was very generous, especially with the comfortable old trousers he had owned as a 'much younger' man, but that did not change the fact that he was about two feet shorter than Vincent himself, and most of the difference was in the length of their legs. As it was, the full trousers behaved more like shorts on the taller man's frame and he visibly shuddered his revulsion when he looked down at himself and saw his own knobby pale kneecaps, like a schoolboy's, poking out under his hem. He was grateful that Lightning was turned away so she would not witness how ridiculous he felt in that moment, but, to his pending dismay, her mind was occupied with other thoughts. A question that had been burning in the back of her brain suddenly poured forth before she could over-think it and lose her nerve.

"Vincent," she called in a voice barely audible over the crackling of the fire.

"Mm?" was his answer as he wrung the residual bathwater out of his hair.

"Last night, in your sleep you said a name. Lucrecia."

Vincent was silent and his body went still, but his mind raced. Just what was Lightning about to ask him about _her_, he wondered. And when she did, what would he say? He felt a sting of stress return to his shoulders but he tried to ignore it.

"What about her?" the man finally returned in his gravelly voice that spoke more danger than he intended. Perhaps that was what caused Lightning to balk before she continued her line of questioning. The motion was imperceptible from behind, where Vincent stood, but she closed her eyes as though bracing herself for a blow when she spoke.

"Who is she?" the woman finally asked. She wouldn't turn to face him, a fact for which Vincent remained infinitely grateful as he considered the best way he could introduce _her_ to one who was unfamiliar with her story.

"She was a scientist working for Shinra Electric Power Company, a senior experimenter on something called: the Jenova Project." Vincent spoke most of that impassively, but he practically spat those final two words, and Lightning was filled with dread regarding that project's final outcome.

"How did you know her? Are you a scientist too?" she asked as she turned to face him.

He shook his head and shifted his weight uncomfortably as he looked for the right words. "I worked for a different division. I supervised the project in terms of information security."

"Information security," Lightning echoed. "So what did you actually do?" Vincent puffed in what might have been his approximation of sarcastic laughter. He sat down on his futon beside Lightning's, not facing her exactly, but not turned completely away. The shadows on his face were made deeper and darker by the flickering orange firelight; the effect was eerie, even alien-looking on his hollow cheeks. If Lightning had looked down, she would have noticed the same alien effect in the shadows off the tendons in Vincent's knees, but luckily for everyone involved, her attention remained focused on his face.

"The Jenova Project, and its sub-program Project S, were both extremely sensitive. My job was to protect two things against foul play: the scientists, and more importantly, their data."

"So you worked pretty closely with those scientists then," the woman reasoned. Vincent shrugged his shoulders. An image of Professor Hojo flashed across his mind without invitation or warning. The memory smiled wickedly as it slid its hand out of a latex glove.

"'Worked with' is a relative term," he answered when the image passed.

The two were silent. Lightning couldn't take it, and finally broke that silence.

"So what happened to her? To Lucrecia?"

Vincent's eyes did the impossible then, and darkened further than ever before. There was deep sorrow there, and regret. Lightning immediately wished she had not asked that question, for she could see that the pain inside him at the thought of that scientist was all too similar to her own turmoil when questioned about Serah. She was about to retract her words and relieve Vincent of the burden of answering, but he spoke first.

"She became a subject in an experiment to breed a super-soldier, and she had a baby. The process drove her mad and she attempted suicide, but instead she became a crystal."

"She was a l'Cie?" Lightning blurted without thinking. Her companion tilted his head in confusion and asked "a what?"

"Er, well," she backtracked, searching for the best explanation. "The time and place where I come from, a l'Cie is a human who has been chosen by the fal'Cie for a special mission called a Focus. When the l'Cie completes their Focus, they become crystallized."

"I don't know that Jenova is one of your fal'Cie," mused Vincent. "A lot of people were injected with those cells, not just Lucrecia, but she's the only one who was crystallized."

"What happened to the others?"

Vincent shrugged again. "They went mad, turned into monsters, died." Lightning's eyes went wide for just a moment, but then she checked herself.

"Sounds like what happens to l'Cie who fail to fulfill their Focus," she informed him evenly. She wanted to ask if he was sure that this Jenova thing wasn't really a fal'Cie, but as Vincent didn't seem to have a clear idea about what a fal'Cie was, she decided that asking probably wouldn't result in a useful answer.

"So _her_ Focus was to give birth to the greatest enemy this Planet has known in over two thousand years?" Vincent asked with no small amount of skepticism. "Your fal'Cie work in mysterious ways, indeed."

"I haven't heard words that true in a long time," Lightning answered dryly.

"You were a crystal," Vincent suddenly realized. "Were you one of these l'Cie then?"

Lightning nodded. "I was. That's...not why I was in crystal when you found me though." Vincent tilted his head in what was fast becoming his tell of confusion. Lightning explained, "To make a long story short, I completed my Focus, only to find myself before the throne of the goddess, Etro. I chose to fight for her, to protect her from the powers of chaos. It was all for the sake of protecting my sister, Serah. But after Serah...passed away, I used the power Etro gave me to transform myself into crystal. The original plan was to sleep for the rest of my unnaturally eternal life, but it seems that's not the case."

"It seems neither of us have much luck with our plans working out," Vincent muttered. 'Unnaturally eternal,' huh? That's what she had said. Unusual though the feeling was for him, Vincent felt a pang of empathy; immortal himself, and not by his own doing, he of anyone alive could understand Lightning's situation. Not so long ago, he had awoken from a long slumber to find everyone he had known either mad, dead, or standing opposite him in a war that threatened to consume the Planet. With difficulty he had gotten to know a new set of companions and finally he came to recognize them as friends. But there remained always a pressing dread upon his heart when he discovered his immortality and he knew: eventually there would come a day when nothing remained of the people or the Planet he loved. Oh yes, Vincent lived and breathed the painful reality that Lightning was just beginning to understand for herself. Another long moment of silence hung in the air around them. Against everything he considered normal, Vincent discovered a sentiment in his heart that he would never have voiced, but for a tiny curling flutter of intuition that told him Lightning needed to hear it. He struggled with the words and he found himself clearing his throat often as he rasped in hesitating tones, "I don't know the details of what happened to Serah...but I think our situations are more similar than we've let on to each other... The wounds I inflicted on myself by my failure may never heal, but I hope that you, Lightning, will be able to meet and overcome your own pain."

Lightning trembled. Silently, she cursed herself for her weakness, even as she considered how to respond to the feelings that she instinctively knew had been agonizing for Vincent to put into spoken words. "Do you think my sins will ever be forgiven?" she asked in a quiet, wavering voice. Vincent turned his head to look her straight in the eyes.

"You remind me of a friend who once asked me that very same question. He said he would try to atone, but I'm still waiting on his verdict."

"Try," Lightning repeated. "There's an idea."

They remained silent but for a simple "good-night" as they each crawled into their respective futons and began to drift off to sleep to the gentle crackling of the low fire. Lightning dreamt no more of Caius Ballad. Instead she saw, as if in memory, a great crowd gathered on the fine sandy shores of Bodhum. There again was Serah, looking ecstatically happy with a grinning Snow by her side, his arm draped across her shoulders; there were Vanille and Hope, playing some kind of tagging game in a wide circle around an annoyed but tolerant Fang; there were all the members of NORA, each with a fluffy long-tailed cat in his or her arms – Yuj's and Lebreau's cats seemed to dislike one another, and would bat at each other if their carriers stood too close; there were Bartholomew and Nora Estheim gazing lovingly at their teenaged son as they stood arm-in-arm; there were members of Lightning's company in the army, including Lieutenant Amodar; there were Sazh and Dajh playing a card game on the beach, using a driftwood log for a card table; there were Vincent and the Chocobo Sage, each astride a gold chocobo that scratched at the sand below. They all stopped their other activities the moment the fireworks began, as their faces were lit with the myriad of colors that burst in the air above them. Every single one of them was happy and at peace. Every face looked visibly happier, elated even, at the resplendent bright colors and patterns as the fireworks show progressed. Even the cats stopped fidgeting and cast their faces up to watch the bright exploding lights.

Lightning stood apart from them all, out over the sea, her feet floating inches above the surface of the water. Her legs felt glued in place and she could not move any closer to the crowd than she already was, but she continued to watch them. With longing, she soon realized. For once in her difficult and sometimes miserable life, she wanted nothing more than to be among those people who were her friends, even when they seemed more like rivals.

About halfway through the firework show, Lightning met Vincent's eyes. Though he was far away on the beach she knew he could see her. Without any hesitation, he drove his chocobo right into the sea, where it trotted over the water's surface until he drew level with her. The magnificent bird shook its glossy golden feathers and emitted the most musical wark of any chocobo Lightning had yet heard.

"Why don't you join us?" asked dream-Vincent. Lightning found she could not speak, so she shook her head vigorously. "Come on," he offered, "you don't want to miss this."

Lightning pointed at her legs and shook her head again. Dream-Vincent seemed to understand.

"Can't walk on water? But Nuggets can. Let me help you." Dream-Vincent reached his hand down. Unsure of how well this plan would work, Lightning was slow to grab hold of him. But when she finally did, he immediately pulled her up onto the chocobo, Nuggets's, back. "Hold onto me with one hand, and onto Nuggets with the other," dream-Vincent instructed, and Lightning did so. They trotted back over the water without incident, without so much as a ripple under the bird's feet, and watched the fireworks from the beach, surrounded by everyone's awed, smiling faces. She leaned back into dream-Vincent's chest, felt the woolly texture of his red mantle against her neck. Somehow, she felt completely at peace.

"Let's watch the fireworks together again next year..."


	5. Chapter 5: The End of One Journey

They awoke to the sound of warking chocobos in the barn area of the cabin. Raising their heavy heads with eyes still caked with sleep, they saw the Chocobo Sage bobbing up and down as he, with little success, commanded the chocobos below to stand still and be quiet. Finally the old man gave up giving the birds orders and shook his head in disapproval.

"Ho ho! You're awake!" cried the Chocobo Sage as he turned and saw his young guests sitting up in their futons. "Care for some breakfast? I'll make you some eggs." He waved away his sleepy guests' feeble protests with a shake of his shillelagh and a stern "you young people can't travel on an empty stomach you know!"

Shortly after breaking the eggs into the pan, the Sage's attention wandered to one of his birds warking outside. He promptly forgot all about the eggs and only Vincent's quick thinking and quicker hands kept breakfast from burning. Vincent had no particular skill for cooking, but he managed to get the eggs plated while they were only slightly overdone. After the misadventure in the stormy mountains, Lightning was far from complaining about overdone eggs; they were preferable to the prospect of freezing to death any day of the week.

After they breakfasted and cleaned up, the Chocobo Sage directed their attention to the birds he had been struggling with that morning. A pair of inky black chocobos greeted them with excited warks.

"You're going to Midgar, right? Jenny and Steff will get you there," the Sage explained as he waved his shillelagh.

Vincent nodded his thanks. He didn't feel like correcting the destination, and as parts of Edge were practically built on top of Midgar, it wasn't such a big mistake anyway.

"Thank you, sir," said Lightning with genuine gratitude despite last night's annoyances.

Within the hour, the two travelers had fully restocked and packed themselves and were sitting astride the black chocobos. Jenny was especially vocal, and she didn't seem to like the squeaks in Lightning's armor, but she didn't fidget too much and Lightning was able to get a decent purchase on her reins.

"Remember to follow the little islands," warned the Chocobo Sage. "These birds can handle the shallow waters around that area, but they won't do so well in the open ocean."

"I'll keep that in mind," answered Vincent.

"And there was something else I wanted to tell you...what was it? Oh, I can't remember for the life of me."

Vincent and Lightning looked at each other and shrugged.

"Well, never mind," the Sage finally decided. Vincent and Lightning said their short goodbyes, then turned their mounts to the south and started them walking. They had just nudged the birds into a brisk trot when the Sage's voice called out after them.

"Good-bye, Vincent!" his voice squeaked. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Valentine!"

Lightning shook her head and kicked Jenny into a full galloping start that would turn into a gliding flight as soon as the bird crested the ridge. Vincent set Steff galloping after her.

The journey out of the mountains was swift, and all too soon the companions felt the telltale pressure on their ears as they swept down into the low foothills. Here the silver trees grew thick and Lightning allowed Jenny's pace to slow to a walk as she looked at the forest about her in wonder. Vincent drew level with her and walked Steff along at her side.

"We're approaching the Forgotten Capital," he told her in a voice barely louder than a gravelly whisper. Lightning remembered the name from before, though she had no idea of its historical significance, but she nodded, and gripped the reins a little tighter.

They passed the edge of the ancient city without stopping even to let the birds drink. Vincent explained to her that the water in the area was still considered unsafe after what the Remnants had done to it. Though unsure of the actual level of danger, they agreed that tempting fate was an activity best left to another time, perhaps a time when the lives of borrowed black chocobos were not on the line. Even as they walked by though, Lightning's attention was drawn to the unusual buildings of the city, to the spiraling lines of the giant shells upon the roofs. There existed in the city a veritable miasma of timelessness, not unlike the timelessness that shimmered and bent the atmosphere in Valhalla. The woman wanted to stay and explore the ruins of the old city and at once she could not bear the idea of entering another land devoid of the passage of time. Her ambivalence gnawed at her until well after they passed the city by and she could no longer see it if she turned her face back.

At the edge of the continent, on the beaches overlooking the shallow surf, the travelers dismounted and took their lunch. The chocobos were finally allowed to drink when they located a freshwater stream running into the ocean, and the riders fed their mounts some extra greens the Sage had provided. After last night's dream, Lightning couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable sitting on the beach, but she didn't mention as much to her companion. The last thing she needed, she decided as she munched on her green salad, was for Vincent to know that she had dreamed of him even once, and she would never _ever_ have admitted that she actually dreamed about him two nights in a row.

Vincent said not a word to her all through lunch. He seemed to be brooding over some subject Lightning could not guess at, though if his minute facial expressions were any indication, it was related to Steff. In truth his eyes may have been focused on the back of his bird's head, but his mind was running through a million possible scenarios for how he would go about releasing Lightning into Tifa's care. His instinctual disinclination to ask for favors was in direct conflict with the objective assessment of his inability to help Lightning achieve any sort of normalcy in her life if she should remain with him. He knew that her best chances of success lay with Tifa: patient, responsible, kindly Tifa, whose steadfast character, permanent settlement and thriving business in Edge were all exactly the sorts of anchors needed to hold steady the timeless wayward valkyrie that had fallen into his lap.

Vincent knew that he was presuming much in his belief that Tifa would, or even _could_, take Lightning in; all things and all friends considered, he didn't have any more viable option.

Such was his brooding as the travelers took their meal by the beach. When Vincent finally spoke to Lightning after lunch it was only to tell her, as they were packing back up, how many miles remained before they would reach their destination.

"At the rate we're going, we'll reach the city today," Lightning calculated out loud. Vincent nodded his accord.

And so they did. The remainder of their journey passed with no significant event, and they trotted their chocobos over the last empty highway before they entered the city of Edge. The ruined bones of Midgar jutted up from the lifeless dirt like boulders cut by the passing of glaciers, great shards of concrete and metal that had once been vividly lit buildings, but were now only broken husks of their former glory. Lightning gasped to see the ruins of Midgar, for they struck her as distinctly similar to a dark urban place she knew in Cocoon: the Hanging Edge. Her visions in Valhalla never included a future that looked quite like this, but after all the havoc Caius wreaked on the timeline, she supposed one future could include the scattering of Cocoon's constituent parts all over the surface of the world below. It made her wonder exactly how the new city of Edge, built upon solid ground and not at all hanging, came by its name.

The most prominent thing Lightning noticed as they rode into the city was that the streets were relatively clean, but parked vehicles, piles of old Midgar rubble, and anything else that was not in the immediate path of the city's commuters seemed to be covered in a fine coat of grey dust. It was no wonder, when she paused to think about it: the city was under almost constant construction in some part of it or other. Steel scaffolds dominated her field of vision no matter which direction she faced, and it seemed there was a concrete mixing truck parked on every block. That every immobile object was covered in dust was suddenly less surprising than the fact that the streets where citizens walked were clean.

In downtown Edge, or what Lightning suspected was considered the downtown area, they dropped their birds off at a Choco-Depot, a station that helped return borrowed mounts to their rightful homes. They handed over Jenny and Steff's reins with instructions to guide the birds to the Chocobo Sage on the northern continent, and proceeded to travel further into the city on foot. Every so often pedestrians would stop and stare and children would point at the outlandish travelers, but Vincent seemed not to mind. Lightning found it was easy to ignore the muttered comments if she kept her attention on the task of memorizing their route through the streets. Vincent led the way, until he drew up short before a dark steel and concrete building. The facade was plain, with no decorations save for a sign above the door: 7th Heaven.

Tifa was back in the storeroom when the tinkling of bells heralded her latest customers. She sighed, pushed her dark hair back over her ear and grabbed one more bottle of wine than she had originally intended. Might as well. Tifa started back toward the main bar.

A quick scan of the restaurant area and Tifa had no problem identifying the new faces.

"Vincent!" she called out through the patrons' din as soon as she saw his iconic red cape. "Long time no see!" Vincent waved to her. He sidestepped around the occupied tables and approached the bar. Lightning followed behind and took a seat beside him.

"Busy today," Vincent noted as Tifa brought out his usual red wine. She smiled as she poured his glass.

"Now the Stigma's gone, we're doing better than ever," she reported with a laugh. "Almost more than I can keep up with. But what about you? Who's your friend?"

Vincent indicated his companion. "Tifa, this is Lightning. Lightning, Tifa."

"Lightning. Pleasure to meet you," Tifa said with a smile as she extended a hand over the top of the bar. Lightning took it briefly. "That armor is pretty unusual; where're you from?"

"I was born in a town called Bodhum," Lightning offered. She was hoping Tifa knew the name. Even if her hometown became a gutted ruin like Midgar, she could at least find some comfort in the knowledge that she hadn't slept so long that her world had been forgotten.

But Tifa didn't know the name. Confused, she asked if that was on the western continent. Lightning had no idea what to make of that question.

"It's a beachside resort town...in the south," Lightning supplied, though she wasn't sure how helpful that information would be. Tifa's face moved as she thought hard about towns that might match Lightning's description.

"So you're from around the Mideel area. Good to hear Bodhum survived the Lifestream flux that destroyed Mideel town. But how'd you end up with this party pooper?" Tifa asked, indicating Vincent, who nearly choked on or spit out his wine in response. "He's practically allergic to anything resembling a holiday destination."

"We actually met in the mountains." Lightning smiled at the thought of a grumpy Vincent sitting on a beach with a fruity umbrella'd cocktail. She hoped Tifa would assume the correct mountains, she added to her thoughts when the cocktail faded out. She also resolved to find a world map as soon as possible so she could figure out where Mideel was in relation to Edge.

Tifa was about to make some remark about the mountains – no doubt something about skiing at the Icicle Inn – but the back door opened at that moment and a young man in dark riding leathers walked in. He carried a wooden crate full of wine bottles in his arms, and on top of that a sack of vegetables. With a grunt, he set the crate down in the store room and carried the vegetable sack into the bar.

"Hey, Tifa, this is the kind of onion you wanted, right?" the man asked through his helmet as he fished the onion in question out of the sack. Tifa inspected it.

"Cloud, you're getting better at finding the right ones," she praised him with a beaming smile. The young man, Cloud, moved to scratch the back of his head, but his helmet was still firmly in place. As if suddenly realizing he no longer needed to be wearing it, he pulled the helmet off.

"I thought you were away," Cloud said as he met Vincent's eyes.

"I was," came the simple reply.

No love lost between these two, I see, thought Lightning. There was something odd about this man, Cloud's, appearance, that Lightning couldn't put a finger on. His spiky blond hair and big blue eyes seemed normal enough, and there was nothing incredibly noteworthy about his coltish build, but Lightning still felt uncomfortable, like the answer was right under her nose and she couldn't see it. Cloud himself was no more comfortable at the sight of Lightning: he too felt like there was something about her that should be familiar to him, but was too alien for him to identify. The effect was all but repulsive to the young man, a feeling that disturbed and alarmed him all the more when he remembered that there was no logical, rational basis for it. Even so, he could hardly fight his instinctual first impression and he decided firmly in that moment that he did not like her.

"By the way, Cloud, this is Lightning," Tifa called his attention back to reality. "She's a friend of Vincent's."

"Vincent makes friends now?" Cloud muttered sarcastically. Then, with a lazy wave of his hand, "Hi."

After the brisk introduction Tifa suddenly asked, "By the way, where are you staying tonight?" The other woman shrugged her slender shoulders.

"We just now arrived, so I don't know," she answered honestly.

Tifa chewed over that information. Finally, "Well any friend of Vincent's is a friend of ours, and you're welcome to stay with us; we've got plenty of room now that we've cleaned up Cloud's office!"

Cloud himself scoffed quietly as he turned back toward the kitchen and store-room. "Tifa you are far too generous for your own good," he mumbled, so quietly that not even Tifa herself, who stood right next to him, and to whom the comment was supposedly addressed, was able to make out more than half the words.

Vincent sighed his relief into his wine glass. He didn't even have to ask Tifa to take Lightning in; she had offered out of the generosity of her heart, bless her. To be sure, that was one scenario he had not considered in his earlier brooding, though knowing Tifa, he probably ought to have.

He sipped his wine in silence and allowed the two ladies to work out their own details. Tifa was absolutely shocked to learn that Lightning had not brought any clothes with her beyond her armor. Immediately, she insisted that the two of them go shopping the next day. Tifa would hear no protests from Lightning's quarter, and Lightning, finding that she had no support one way or another on this issue from Vincent, quickly ran out of excuses for Tifa to wave away. Her mouth gaped open as she looked for one final recourse that would prevent the other woman from going out of her way for Lightning's own sake, but there was no such recourse to be had. At last, Lightning gave in, smiled and accepted the offer.

About an hour later, Lightning excused herself to the restroom; the moment she was out of sight, Tifa leaned toward Vincent over the bar.

"Are you going to tell me where she's really from?" the woman asked quietly, with a stern set to her brow and jaw that Vincent knew better than to deny. A nearly silent breath was the only expression of any sort of emotion he gave before answering.

"Bodhum, like she said," he began in a gravelly murmur. "It's just that as far as anyone knows, the city of Bodhum probably rose and fell thousands of years ago."

Tifa tilted her head and arched her eyebrow. Her voice lost none of its austerity. "Explain," she commanded. Vincent winced; Tifa was very liberal about hearing out a story before judging, but even she might have a hard time believing this.

"Lightning has been hibernating in crystal for a _long_ time. She never heard of the Calamity Jenova before yesterday. She doesn't know anything about the way our world today works, not even our geography." Tifa pursed her lips.

"So you, what, found her when she woke up from hibernating? And brought her here."

Vincent looked down at his glass, away from Tifa's eyes and started drumming his fingers on the edge of the bar. "I accidentally woke her up. I know she doesn't look it, but she's still in shock about everything. I just wanted to bring her somewhere she could be safe until she gets her bearings and her life back together."

He was almost expecting a slap as reward for his presumption. Instead he felt Tifa's hand gently alight on his shoulder. He looked up to meet her gaze.

"You did right in bringing her here," Tifa insisted. "I like her, and I've got the room, and I could use the extra help around here. Cloud's always out on deliveries and Denzel and Marlene are still a bit young for it." Here she hesitated and collected herself before asking, "Are you staying in town then?"

Vincent cocked his head. "Should I?"

Tifa scoffed. "You should stick around for a few days at least. Just until Lightning gets settled." It was Vincent's turn to scoff.

"She's probably sick of me by now anyway." He had meant it to be a joke, and had also meant to chase it with another sip of wine, but Tifa's hand over his glass stopped him. She found it much less funny.

"Right now you are the only thing familiar to her in this world. I want to help her build a new life, not see her live in fear that people will keep abandoning her." She sighed heavily. "You don't _have_ to stay, but I really think it would be good for her. And who knows, it might be good for you, too. Cloud's right: you don't make friends very often. You should cherish the ones you've got."

Vincent mulled over her words. Would it be good for him to stay? Would it be good for Lightning if he stayed? He closed his eyes. The last thing he wanted to do was anything that he knew would hurt her. One woman, a very good woman, had been hurt by his pride and stupidity. Hubris had kept him from answering either his duties or his desires as far as _she_ was concerned; and _she_ had suffered for it dearly. If, _if_, there was a chance that Lightning would benefit from his staying, he owed it to her, and to _her_, to stay.

Still, a nagging in his brain like the buzz of a mosquito at his ear wondered if his presence would really be an asset, or a hindrance.

He resolved to stay, at least until he determined that he was no longer needed or wanted.

"By the way," Tifa's voice returned to normal volume and she stood up straight. "I know you just got back to town, but I left you a voicemail: is there any chance you've heard anything new about those weird raids?"

"Raids?" Lightning's voice asked from behind Vincent's head. So she returned from the restroom. No wonder Tifa had changed the subject so quickly. Tifa shifted her focus to Lightning as she explained.

"The last week or so, there have been reports of attacks on rural towns. No one seems to know who's behind it, but I heard they hit Gongaga day before yesterday." Vincent's head perked up at that last bit.

"Why Gongaga? There's nothing out there anymore, just a hundred people and a melted down reactor core." An idea, a dreaded, harrowing idea, hit him square in the gut. "What other towns have been hit?"

Tifa must have noticed the change in his mien and tone, because her own voiced lowered and her face became grave. "Modeoheim, and North Corel." Vincent's eyes widened for a moment, then he sighed and leaned back. "Does that mean something to you?" she prompted him.

"They're targeting reactor towns," he said, as surely as if he were introducing himself, or commenting on the scaffolding outside being made of steel.

Tifa shook her head. "There's no reactor in Modeoheim," she reminded him.

"Not a completed one," Vincent countered. "But that detail might not matter to whoever is behind the attacks."

"So what do you think? Scavengers, eco-terrorists, Shinra themselves?" Tifa speculated out loud. It wasn't clear which of the three she was hoping for above the others.

Vincent shook his head and took a deep swig of his remaining wine. "I don't know, but if the reactors really are the target, it's only a matter of time before they hit Edge." All three of them took a deep breath in unison.

"Bet you're really glad you came back," Tifa answered with a mild sardonic edge on her voice. She poured Vincent another glass of wine, and filled one up for Lightning while she was at it.


	6. Chapter 6: Vincent's Request

Tifa and Lightning bonded faster than Vincent, or anyone else, could have imagined possible. The two women set out bright and early the next morning, hunting out shop after shop like forest truffles. Once there, the ladies, primarily Tifa, wasted no time in digging through the racks of clothes in search of the cutest styles in the best colors for Lightning's complexion. Lightning herself continued to protest futilely as dresses and skirts were thrust into her arms in shades like robin egg, lavender, and dusty rose. She managed to talk Tifa out of buying her the frilliest of these fabric confections, but only after she tried them on and could demonstrate a flaw in design, construction, or fit; mostly Tifa just wanted to watch Lightning parade around in frilly clothes. Upon later reflection, Tifa supposed she was so eager and insistent because the cutest clothes that she loved never came in a size that could accommodate her bust, and having the slender and trim Lightning try them in her stead was the next best thing.

At last they returned to 7th Heaven, hungry and laden with about two weeks' worth of coordinates, including underwear and shoes. Tifa would accept no promises of repayment from Lightning; she said only that if the latter would help out in the bar now and again, during the lunch rush for example, her supposed debt would be considered paid in full.

"Really, Light, don't worry about it too much; it was my pleasure," she insisted.

Lightning balked. No one had called her Light in a long time. She hadn't had a real friend in a long time either, she remembered with no small amount of regret. That feeling of regret was quickly followed by a vague but pleasant warmth as she considered that the woman before her was as good and worthy a friend as she could hope to find anywhere. Lightning welcomed the nickname with a smile, and her assurance that she would indeed help out in the bar, or the restaurant, or wherever else she might be needed. Tifa's answering grin was as much motivated by admiration for Light's positive attitude as by the prospect of having a female of her own age to spend time with during her long work day.

Following their guardian's example, Marlene and Denzel quickly adopted the new nickname as well. The children took to 'Auntie Light' almost as quickly as Tifa herself had. Denzel had been brought to 7th Heaven by Cloud, but despite his best efforts he had never felt that they were especially close, even when Cloud actually stuck around for more than a day at a time; for Denzel, the addition of another adult presence in the house was a source of security. At first Light actually reminded the boy of Cloud, both in appearance and in aloof manner, but those similarities quickly melted away in the first few days as she, in sharp contrast to that lone wolf, warmed up to the kids, and would actually smile in their direction now and then.

Marlene's cheery obstinacy, her love for helping Tifa in the kitchen, and her exacting taste in juice all reminded Light of her childhood with her sister. Watching the woman and the girl experimenting on some new menu item brought Light back to the days when her own mother taught Serah to make her special signature soup. Serah excelled at that soup, as she seemed to excel at every challenge their mother had thrown at her. So it was with Marlene: a bright girl with quick hands and a good sense of both time and seasoning, Marlene was more than equal to any recipe, established or experimental, that Tifa could dish out.

And Denzel, with his singular history, enduring spirit no matter what the hardship, and deep spring of inner strength, could only take Light back to the days when she had traveled with Hope Estheim. From Valhalla, the world out of time, she had watched the young, scrawny boy Hope grow into a brilliant, if idealistic, researcher: stable, upright and ethical, dedicated to his work, yet not so academic as to lose sight of the real world and its real people. In the moments she was able to see him, no matter what she was dealing with in protecting Etro from the powers of chaos, no matter how hard she had to fight to maintain enough balance for Serah and Noel to use the Historia Crux safely, Light was nothing if not proud of the man Hope had become, proud of his parents for raising such a magnificent son, proud of herself and Snow and Fang and Vanille for all of their respective influences on him, for providing him with the additional perspective he would need to become the wise, brilliantly shining star of the Academy. Light looked on Denzel, who was only a little younger now than Hope was at the moment they first met, and she saw the potential for the same sparkling future, given only the right influences and the right opportunity.

Vincent made himself scarce in that first week Light spent at 7th Heaven. At Tifa's invitation, he had joined the eclectic group for several dinners, but he made a point of avoiding contact with them during the day. He wasn't a part of their family, and he had no real business in interfering with Light's adjustment to life in Edge. He believed his presence at those dinners had provided Light with enough assurance that he was still available if she needed him, but was not enough for her to think him overbearing.

Unfortunately, his tactics had something of the opposite effect. His scarcity succeeded in nothing if not filling Light with a sense of anxious dread that she had somehow driven him away. Had her questions about such a sore topic as Lucrecia proved too harsh for him? Had her very presence in that mountain ruined his carefully engineered camping trip, and did he secretly resent her for it? Did the Chocobo Sage's careless words disturb him so thoroughly that he felt the need to stay as far away from her as possible?

She could reasonably forget about him when she kept busy in the restaurant, or when she followed the news reports about the ongoing mysterious raids on the 'reactor towns'; in light of _those_, she could reasonably forget about or diminish all her own problems, but all the burning questions, wild speculations and more haunted Light in the hours she had to herself. Finally she formed them into as innocent and diplomatic questions as she could and voiced her concerns to Tifa.

"Vincent doesn't secretly hate you, if that's what you're getting at," the dark-haired woman insisted that night as the two of them sat at the empty bar making a supply list for Cloud to pick up in the morning. "He's just...he's distant with just about everyone, even the people he calls friends. It's not that he's trying to be cold or anything, he just doesn't really understand how to be social."

Light sighed and picked at the hem of her apricot skirt. "So I didn't scare him off or make him sick of me?"

Tifa just laughed.

"I've seen more of that man in the last week than in the year before that," she said with a smile dancing in her dark eyes. "The reason for that, the _only _reason he's even still in town, is for you. He's trying to look out for you, in his own twisted, distant way."

The pink-haired woman seemed to take some assurance from Tifa's words. That Vincent was poor at expressing his feelings and otherwise lacking in social graces, she could attest from her own experiences with him. That he cared for and worried about her more than he let on, she could therefore readily believe. She nodded, forced herself to stop playing with her hem, and went back to contributing to the supply list. Tifa smiled to herself and resolved to have a chat with Vincent as soon as she could arrange it.

She cornered him in his apartment the very next day. As usual, she commented about the sparsity of the furnishings, about how he could use a new wallpaper, and had he ever replaced the light bulb in the refrigerator he never seemed to use?

"Did you come here to remodel my apartment?" was the most he would concede in reply. Tifa turned away from her scrutiny of his home to face the man himself.

"No, I didn't," she answered, the laughter and lilt gone, replaced by grave concern. "It's about Light."

_Light,_ Vincent mouthed the word, before he realized she was talking about Lightning. His shoulders came up, arms crossed over his midriff. "Is she okay?" he asked in a voice that was too calm compared to his anxious body language. Tifa understood that calm to be nothing more than a flimsy facade.

"She's adjusting. She gets along really well with the kids, and she's learning to be nice to the customers. But she, uh, well, no point in sugar-coating it: she misses you."

Vincent's chin moved down in his typical tilt of confusion. At the same moment his eyebrows shot up and he blinked several times. He took a moment to digest the words that were the exact opposite of his expectations. Vincent had not the slightest idea of what he might have done or said that would cause any person to miss him when he was gone. He was cold, and awkward, and while he understood the power of familiarity, he could not imagine that more familiarity with _him_ would result in a higher degree of affection. Why Lightning, the clever, controlled, quietly strong like a mountain wildflower, beautiful Lightning would miss him for a moment, for any reason, was beyond his understanding.

Vincent decided to play it cool: "And?"

Tifa blinked in disbelief. "'And?' And what? Don't you miss her, too?"

He shrugged his shoulders and sat down on the edge of his bed. "We agreed that I would keep away. It's better for her not to spend too much time around a 'party pooper' like me." Tifa took a deep, steadying breath. She was damned if she would walk away without giving Vincent a run for his money. Her arms crossed resolutely over her torso.

"You mean 'you decided' you would keep away, but answer me this: regardless of what you _think_ she needs, do you miss her?"

Vincent was silent. He hadn't taken much time to examine his own feelings; whatever he decided to do he decided based on what he thought was best for her. Or that's what he kept telling himself. Sometimes he wondered if he wasn't staying away as a means of punishing himself for his past sins. Oh, you want to see her? he seemed to taunt himself. Well you can't; you don't deserve to. You don't deserve to be happy—

He started at the realization that being near Lightning made him happy. Not giddy or euphoric or hyperactive; just happy. Contented. That soft, gentle smile of hers made him feel peaceful. It was the sort of simple happiness a house-cat might feel in the presence of a beloved master.

His extended silence, coupled with a peculiar dreamy look in his eyes, told Tifa everything she needed to know. "Why don't you two go out one of these days?" she suggested. "Go have a drink, just the two of you, go get dinner away from me and Cloud and the kids. Go win a fortune at the new casino that just opened, or see a concert together."

Vincent narrowed his eyes. "What, just go out?" he asked skeptically. Tifa nodded, her dark hair bouncing with the force of the movement.

"Next time you come for dinner – and I expect you tomorrow at eleven o'clock, sharp – go ahead and ask her," she goaded. He looked as though he wanted to make some rebuttal, but the words died in his throat and he sat there, gaping wordlessly at her. Tifa dismissed his gaping and continued. "Put that poor overworked noggin of yours away for just five minutes and think with your heart for once. See you tomorrow night. Eleven o'clock."

With that, Tifa exited the apartment, leaving Vincent sitting there on his bed, stunned, and more than a little anxious for what would happen at tomorrow night's dinner. For the first time in a very long time, Vincent not only felt, but allowed himself a moment to acknowledge, a fluttering of excited apprehension at the thought of what he would say to Lightning when next he saw her. Over and over again he rehearsed the words he would use, then re-scripted his lines when they sounded too ridiculous to his ears, which they did every five minutes or so.

He ought not to have bothered, for those carefully studied words flew from his mind in the very instant he saw her at eleven o'clock. It was all he could do to manage a proper greeting for her, and to tell her that she looked very well this evening.

'Very well' was of course an understatement; to him she looked positively stunning. Tifa, the evil genius that she was, had styled Light expertly; she wore a light blue dress that made her eyes sparkle, with a round neckline that perfectly framed the silver lightning-bolt-shaped pendant resting just below her collarbones; her hair had been curled and pinned up so that loose ringed locks occasionally swung forward as she moved and brushed her ear or cheek. Vincent discovered quickly that trying to look at her and talk to her at the same time was very nearly impossible.

For Light's part, she wasn't entirely certain why Tifa had insisted on doing her hair in the hours leading up to dinner. It was just a meal with the family and Vincent; it was not as though there was anyone Light felt a particular need to impress. Why, it was even after the dinner service in the restaurant, so there were only a few lingering barflies who would see her, and not a one of them was worthy of the amount of effort Tifa wanted to put into Light's appearance. Even so, she couldn't help but feel the heat of a blush rise through her neck when Vincent told her she looked well. It bothered her more than a little that he wouldn't look in her direction after that. Perhaps paying her that initial compliment had exhausted his admittedly low energy supply for social niceties. Perhaps he simply had other things on his mind. Light tried not to think about it too much as she ate, but a tiny spark of disappointed hope fizzled in her heart whenever she had to ask him to pass the potatoes or the salt and he complied without so much as a word to her.

After dinner Light began to clear the table. Vincent offered to help – the actual spoken words of which were offered to Tifa more than to Light, though the latter was in charge of clean-up – and together they managed to get every dish into the kitchen sink in a single trip. He further offered to dry and stack the dishes as she finished scrubbing them. Surprised as Light was at his offer, having never figured him for a domestically inclined sort, she accepted gratefully and the two began their work in silence but for the running of the hot water and the clink of porcelain.

"Er, Lightning," Vincent suddenly began about halfway through the plates. He still had a hard time looking in her direction, but he gave it his best shot.

"Yes?" Light responded, turning her big blue eyes, made bigger and bluer in effect by her dress, up to look at him. Vincent's hands and feet suddenly felt uncomfortably warm. He cleared his throat.

"What are you doing this weekend?" he asked. He had tried to sound innocent, but in his ears he sounded even more ridiculous than the words he had rehearsed the night before.

Lightning stopped scrubbing plates to consider. "I don't remember Tifa making any plans for this weekend, and the project I'm helping Denzel with should be done by Friday. Why do you ask?"

Vincent steeled himself and swallowed hard. The moment of truth had come. "Do-you-want-to-see-_LOVELESS-_with-me?" Lightning seemed not to comprehend his question, and he realized too late that he had asked it too fast to be understood. At her "see what?" he cleared his throat again and clarified. "There's this show, _LOVELESS,_ I've never seen it but everyone says it's good. I was wondering if you wanted to see it. With me." His eyes darted downward to the plate he was drying, then back to Light.

She smiled that soft smile that calmed him even as it made his heart skip a beat or three. "I never took you for a theater person. But, sure, I'd like to see it."

His sigh of relief was far more audible than he intended, even over the hissing of the faucet. Vincent cleared his throat for a third time and went back to drying dishes. A smile quirked at the edges of his lips and he was grateful for his red mantle's presence, blocking his silly smile from the view of the one who had caused it.

Light knew the blush had risen up from her neck into her face. She hoped Vincent wouldn't say anything else that would force her to look up until it receded again. In a moment, she reflected that Vincent generally wasn't one to say things unless prompted, so she was probably safe. She smiled.


	7. Chapter 7: Loveless

Tifa's late night reaction to Light's report that she was to see _LOVELESS_ with Vincent was halfway between a squeal of delight and a cry of woe at the fact that Light didn't have a proper outfit for going to the theater.

"The theater is a special place, and you'll need to dress to the nines," Tifa instructed when Light wondered aloud about why her current wardrobe was insufficient. "You'll need a proper dress – oh why didn't you let me buy you that pink one? It was _perfect_."

"The skirt was six feet wide," Light reminded her. "I couldn't walk in it."

"Slinky dress it is, then," Tifa immediately replied with a wink. Then, without warning, she gasped. Light waited patiently for Tifa to recover, and she felt more than a little uneasy when Tifa's wide-eyed expression turned to foxy smirk. "I have _just the thing,_" she said in a hushed voice. "Come with me, come with me."

And with that, Tifa grabbed Light by the hand and practically dragged her upstairs, into Cloud's office.

"Um," Cloud greeted as he looked up from his latest motorcycle repair manual at the two ladies. He didn't spend very much time in 7th Heaven lately, mostly to avoid uncomfortable run-ins with Light, so to see her suddenly in the cramped space of his office was unnerving at best.

"We'll just be a minute," Tifa placated him as she walked right past him to a wardrobe in the corner. She flung wide the doors and began digging.

"No that's okay, I was just about to go," Cloud answered as he stood and tucked the manual under his arm. Those words gave Tifa pause.

"The church again?" she asked over her shoulder. In her periphery she saw him nod and turn away. He walked out and disappeared down the stairs. Tifa sighed and looked up at Light.

"He actually does hate me," Light said. There was no question in her voice.

"Would you believe me if I told you he's almost always been like that?" the dark-haired woman asked with a pained expression on her face. "Even on his good days he's not exactly a social butterfly, and I think you scare him a little."

Light snorted softly. "Back home I tended to have that effect on people."

"From what you've told me, your family didn't think so," Tifa said as she went back to digging, though she was more careful and controlled about it this time.

"Serah was stronger than I gave her credit for, and she knew me well enough to hold her own," Light explained. "And Snow was braver than most. Or stupider than most. Take your pick." Tifa giggled at that.

"He's the one you punched out?"

"One of a few..."

Tifa flat-out laughed. "Struck by Lightning. That never stops being funny. Ah-_ha!_ Here's what we're looking for." She pulled a mass of purple fabric from the wardrobe.

When Tifa let fall the yards of deep purple satin, Light saw that what the woman held in her arms was a full-length gown. It was conservative of cut, with a high collar and long sleeves with poufed shoulders, but the color and the elegant sheen of the fabric itself caught Light's eye.

"I'd have to take it in," Tifa explained, "Cloud's much broader in the shoulder than you, and I think while I'm at it I'll give it a real neckline, but what do you think?"

Something she said held Light's attention. "This was Cloud's?" she asked after a moment of silence during which she tried to make sure she had heard correctly.

"Yeah, it's a long story, but Cloud needed to go under cover, so he got this dress, and I kept it because, well, it would be a shame to waste this much fabric... Anyway, I think this color would look just beautiful on you, so if you like it, I would be happy to fix it up for you."

"It is a beautiful color," Light agreed as she ran a fold of the skirt through her fingers. "Cloud won't mind?" Tifa shook her head.

"It's not like he's ever going to use it again."

Light bit her lip and gave Tifa a mischievous smile. "Can you make one of those necklines with the bump things on the top?"

Tifa's head cocked in confusion. "Bumps? Are you talking about a sweetheart?" Light said that's probably what it's called. "You got it," she answered with a smile. "You know, you should try it on. So I know how much to take it in."

With her excitement at the prospect of going to the theater on what she could only assume was a date, it took no more goading than those two sentences to get Light to try the dress on. All the while, Tifa put a pin in here and there, talked about how she was going to add trim to the bodice, about how she enjoyed the poem of _LOVELESS_ and thought the play was just a marvelous adaptation. She and Light traded ideas back and forth about how to do up the latter's hair; Light would have been just as satisfied with leaving it down, with only a little product in it to manage frizz, but Tifa opened her eyes to the idea of an elegant twist.

After three days of planning, plotting, scheming, and stitching, the appointed day arrived. Tifa closed down the bar down after lunch so she would have the maximum amount of time to help Light get ready. "Family business," she explained hastily as she shooed her last straggling customers from the establishment.

A week ago that phrase would have bothered Light, but she had grown used to hearing Tifa refer to her as part of the family. 'I never had a sister of my own, even though I always wanted one,' Tifa confided in Light during one of their late night supply list chats. 'Marlene behaves more like a daughter than anything else, and Yuffie's always away so I don't get to hang out with her much. It gets lonely.' Light understood that sentiment completely, and she knew that she hadn't always done right by her own sister. She wasn't looking for Tifa to replace her lost Serah, but maybe she could try to make up for the neglect of the past by her actions in the here and now. It was with a full and caring heart that Light joined Tifa's unconventional family, so now as the latter turned her customers away, the former had no more feelings of guilt; were their roles reversed, Light would have done the same for Tifa without a moment's hesitation. That's what sisters do.

A text message from Vincent to Tifa explained that the show started at six in the afternoon. He would arrive at five-thirty to pick up Light. "I hope he's bringing a car; that's a long walk for only thirty minutes," Tifa sighed as she set the phone down and went back to brushing out Light's hair. They had agreed on the idea of the twist, and they had found a good mousse to put into Light's fringe so it would sweep down and to the side and stay out of her face.

"You look amazing," Tifa exclaimed when she was finished her styling work. Light turned to regard herself in the mirror. What met her was an image she never thought she would see: her skin, dried by wind and freckled by sun during her tenure in the Guardian Corps, was suddenly smooth and even in tone; her hair, which was naturally uneven in both length and texture, suddenly appeared uniformly soft even as it stayed exactly in place; the liner on her eyes made them pop as never before; her lips were a shade of pink she had never seen in them, and shiny with gloss to boot. It was practically a miracle Tifa had wrought: Light was, she could think of no other word for it: _beautiful._

So this is what it must have felt like to be Serah, Light thought.

"Tifa, you're not secretly a l'Cie, right?" Light asked. "I can't figure out how else you could work magic like this." Tifa laughed.

"Not a l'Cie, and not even materia. Just good old-fashioned cosmetics."

Vincent arrived soon after they finished their work. True to Tifa's prediction, he had rented a car. He had also apparently rented a suit, because he appeared to her in a fancy tuxedo, with no wooly red obstruction over the lower half of his face. His long dark hair, usually left wild to its own devices, had been tamed into a ponytail running like a black river down his back. Tifa showed him into the restaurant area and bade him wait just a moment while she ran to fetch Light from upstairs. And run she did, with a beaming smile on her face.

"You look beautiful; go get him," she said softly to Light as she gently prodded the pink-haired woman toward the stairs. Light felt awkward in her high heels but Tifa had put her through her paces; she would not fall. With a deep steadying breath and a likewise steadying hand on the bannister, Light started downstairs to face her first date in recorded history.

Upon seeing Light in that fabulous purple gown, Vincent could not have been more floored if he had been punched in the face by a bear. She was beautiful even when she was dirty and bedraggled from a hail storm; now, in a dress perfectly tailored to her form, in makeup designed to highlight without changing her natural features, with that achingly soft smile of hers beaming down on him from on high (on the staircase), Vincent once again realized that it would be extremely difficult for him to speak to her while looking anywhere near her general direction.

The first thing Light did when she drew level with him was touch the edge of his lapel. "You clean up pretty well," she said with approval. Vincent had to clear his throat before he could make himself speak.

"So do you," he answered tightly. "Ready?"

Light nodded. She was confused at the tension in his voice. He sounded like the last thing he wanted to do was go to this show, but if that was indeed the case, why in the world would he have invited her?

"Are you okay?" she asked him when they were seated in the car. With his attention drawn to the road, Vincent had a perfectly legitimate excuse not to look at her. As such he was able to answer her freely.

"Just fine," he replied, and he even managed what passed for a smile on his guarded features. "I hear good things about this show, and this particular company's production is said to be the best of the decade."

"I mean, you've been acting a little strange the past few days," Light prompted. "Is something bothering you?"

Vincent shrugged his shoulders. Oh, he was bothered alright, but there was no way he could express that to her without sounding creepy. "I didn't realize I was acting strangely," he deflected.

"You used to look me in the eye when you spoke to me," Light reminded him. She crossed her arms and tried not to do anything that might be taken for a pout.

"Maybe you haven't noticed, but I don't have the best track record for doing and saying the right things in social situations. Especially when beautiful women are involved," Vincent remarked to her. "Trust me on this: there's nothing wrong with you or anything you've done."

Light couldn't decide how to respond, so she fell silent and let him drive. The going was slow, as he constantly had to brake for jaywalking pedestrians, but they still arrived at the theater with a few minutes to spare to find their seats in the packed house.

Just before the lights went down, Light leaned toward Vincent. "By the way," she said to him in a quiet voice so as not to disturb those seated around her. "Thanks for bringing me here." She wasn't quite certain if she meant the theater or Edge at large, but either way the words were applicable.

For the first time that afternoon, Vincent turned to look at her directly. The full force of her beauty was like staring into the sun, but he held her gaze for as long as he could bear it. He said nothing to her – he _could_ say nothing to her – but he smiled in response. It was the first time Light had seen a genuine smile on his face, and she had to admit, upon reflection, the effect was not unbecoming.

Then the lights dimmed and the orchestra began their overture. The curtain rose on the first act of the show...

"Of course... I'll come back to you. Even if you don't promise to wait. I'll return knowing you'll be here." The last line of the play rung out in the theater, which, though packed full, remained utterly silent as not a single member of that audience dared so much as breathe. The character of the Prisoner backed away as he spoke, until finally he was engulfed by fog and disappeared. His lover remained on center stage as the line was spoken, but she fell to her knees, wracked with silent trembling sobs as the final curtain fell.

The audience rose in a standing ovation for the curtain call, but Light, in a state of emotional shock, remained still in her seat. Vincent had stood with the rest of the crowd, but he swiftly returned to his chair when he noticed that Light did not seem at all well. He leaned in close to her so as to speak to her through the din of the applause.

"Are you alright?" he asked when his mouth was barely inches from her ear, though even then she found it difficult to hear him. Light turned her face to look at him. He was shocked to see that she was on the verge of tears. "Let's get out of here," Vincent suggested. The woman nodded and allowed him to take her hand and arm and guide her from the theater.

"Come on, walk with me," he told her when they had finally gotten out of that building. "The air will do you good." The night was dark and there were few streetlights, but that didn't stop them. Vincent resolved to take her at least around the large block before trying to coax her into the enclosed space of the car to take her home.

They had completed about a third of Vincent's planned circuit around the block, darkened and quiet but for the theater entrance on the north side, when Light finally found her voice.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to break down in there," she told him quietly.

Vincent shook his head. "Don't apologize. Are you okay?" That question gave Light pause. She licked her lips and shook her head like she was trying to find words that would express the jumble of feelings inside her. Vincent remained silent as he waited for her to collect her thoughts.

"That character, the Prisoner... It's hard to explain, but I couldn't help but feel like maybe he and I are in the same boat. You might say I'm a prisoner of my circumstances. I don't—I don't know how to really move on, from the life I had. That life will never return, and I know that, but..." here she broke off and she hung her head. No tears fell, but her eyes stung as though she really would start crying at any moment.

She didn't see the movement, but all of a sudden she felt the pressure and warmth of arms around her. Vincent held her tightly against his chest; both of his arms wound around her slim frame and formed both a literal and figurative shield around her.

"I miss her," Light's muffled voice sounded from the region of Vincent's shoulder. "My entire life was to keep her safe; what do I do now?"

Vincent had no answers. It was all he could do to hold her steady in the moment. He had no business giving advice on this matter. Wasn't he still trying to move on from from missing _her_?

"I don't want to put all this on you..." Light started, but Vincent cut her off.

"Don't," he said abruptly. Light looked up at him. "Don't hurt yourself more with worrying about how things affect me. I've been in a situation close to yours and I know how it feels, and I also know that you can't put all this extra guilt on yourself.

"I'm here for you when you need me. Period. Don't worry about anything else."

Light sniffed back her tears and leaned her head down once more into his shoulder. "How did you work yourself out of your version of my situation?" she asked him without lifting her head again.

"I'm still working on it," was his honest answer.

"But you don't break down like this," Light countered.

Vincent exhaled heavily. "Not in public."

For a full minute they were completely silent, though their embrace did not break. The only sounds around them were the engines of cars on the street in front of the theater, the voices of the pedestrians in the same area, and the occasional chirping of crickets and other evening bugs.

"Where can I buy a phone?" Light asked abruptly. "If you're serious about always being there for me, I need a way to contact you." Vincent chuckled and promised to take her to the same store where he bought his own cell phone. He'd take her in the morning, bright and early, give her his number right there at the outset, and she'd still be home in time to help Tifa with the lunch service.


	8. Chapter 8: Paradigm Shift

It was a simple enough business: Tifa authorized an additional line on her family plan – it was more cost-efficient that way, she explained with a shrug to a dumbstruck Light – and the new phone was purchased and activated within a few hours.

"Did you pick this one out?" Marlene asked as she looked the new phone over. Light answered that she had; it wasn't the prettiest one, but there was something about it that called to her. Perhaps it was the pre-programmed sudoku and crossword puzzles. "It looks just like Cloud's," the little girl informed her sternly. "We need to get you some stickers so you two don't mix them up."

Soon enough, the back of Light's brand new phone was covered in images of moogles and one cartoony pink chocobo wearing a top hat.

"Perfect," Marlene proclaimed. "Now, about your ringtone—"

She never got a chance to finish voicing her mad scheme for Light's ringtones, for at that moment, the bar entrance burst open and one of the largest men Light had ever seen lumbered inside with deafening tromps of his thick, dusty, mud-caked, mysteriously-stained boots. The man himself was hardly any cleaner; khaki streaks of dried clay mud covered most of the left side of his body and formed a stark contrast against his dark brown skin. His right forearm ended in a roughly hand-shaped metallic appliance covered in ribs and divots as though meant to accommodate a number of different optional attachments. The appliance itself was rust-free and obviously cared for, but it also seemed to be covered in a light sheen of oil that beaded and congealed in certain seams and where the appliance met flesh. Streaks of that oil trailed around his forearm in awkward lines and curves and there was a significant amount of greasy residue on the right side of his clothing where his metal "hand" brushed against his side.

He had entered the bar with a loud, boisterous roar of greeting that shook some of the dried clay from his dense but short beard. At the sight of his six-and-a-half-feet tall, well-over-300-pound bulk, Light instinctively shifted her weight so she was between the dirty man and the little girl.

How great was her surprise then, when Marlene's stern phone examination turned suddenly into a gleeful squeal and with a cry of "Daddy!" she raced around Light's frame and hugged the giant man around the waist! How much greater her shock when the man's rowdy, wide-mouthed grin abruptly softened into a similarly wide but much more innocent smile and he answered Marlene's hug with an embrace of his own!

"Hey there, girl," he said affectionately to Marlene as he hugged her. "You been good for Tifa and Spiky, yeah?"

Marlene pushed away from 'Daddy' enough to look up at him. "As good as can be expected," she answered with a wink. The man laughed.

"That's my girl!" he boomed back.

Light was torn between wanting to say _something_ and not knowing what or how. She was spared the mortification of saying the wrong thing, however, by the appearance of Tifa from the kitchens. She was laden with filled plates balanced in ways that still boggled Light's brain, and these she served up to her lunch customers with such practiced grace it was like watching a dance, the ballet of the working-class diner.

"Barret!" Tifa exclaimed once her hands were free of plates. "You should have called ahead, I would've prepared your usual." The large, dark man, Barret, lifted his hands in a placating gesture.

"Just passin' through, T—, no need to fuss. Here's on the way to the new dig site, just thought I'd pop in an' see my two favorite girls. And where's ol' Spiky at these days?"

Tifa sighed. "He's off in one of his usual places or other," she said, her hand waving dismissively.

"Oh, Dad," Marlene cried out suddenly as she tugged on the edge of Barret's vest. "You can't have just two favorite girls anymore; there's three of us now!"

Barret gaped at his adopted daughter, but no words came out. Marlene darted from his side back over to her pink-haired companion.

"This is Light. Oh, her real name is Lightning, but we call her Auntie!" Light smiled inwardly at the irony of her 'real name', but did not comment on it as she extended her hand – her left hand, since she didn't really want to try a handshake with the metal appliance – in greeting.

"Light, huh?" Barret confirmed as he took her hand. He was pleasantly surprised by the strength of her handshake; it was not something he would have expected from such a slight figure, and with pink hair no less. Yet there it was, and the woman's hand was even callused, like someone with a lot of experience in heavy manual labor or combat. A woman like that, who knew how to be useful outside of typical 'womanly' pursuits, instantly won his respect and approval. "Barret Wallace. Good to meet ya."

Light, released from the handshake, backed off a bit. "Wallace?" she repeated. She looked from Barret to Marlene and her eyes widened in recognition. "Oh, suddenly the phone store thing makes much more sense."

Everyone in the conversation displayed their respective body language for confusion. "The...phone store...thing?" asked Tifa with her arms crossed over her belly.

Light was quick to explain. "Yeah, when I got there and told them to put me on your family plan, the woman working there asked me if my last name was Lockhart, Wallace, or Strife. I had no idea what she was talking about."

"That's because you put me on your plan too, right, Tifa?" Marlene interjected. Tifa nodded slowly.

"And what name did you give them?"

Light shrugged. "Farron."

Tifa laughed. "A Lockhart, a Wallace, a Farron, and two Strifes, all on one phone plan. That has to be messing with their internal system."

Light balked. "Two Strifes?" It was Tifa's turn to shrug.

"I asked Denzel for his last name when I got him his phone, and he said just list him as a Strife. So that's what I did."

"Order's up!" came a call from the cook in the kitchen. Tifa excused herself to go deal with the plates, and told the others she'd put an order in for a lunch. She would not hear of Barret leaving to run off to his dig site without a proper meal. Canned beans on a propane camping stove was not a man's lunch, she admonished as she disappeared into the kitchen.

"So, Light," Barret began as he seated himself in a chair at Light and Marlene's table, "or do you like new folks to call you Lightning?"

"Light's just fine," she answered.

"Light then, you must be a new friend of Tifa's." Light nodded her accord.

"It feels like I've known her forever, but really I only met Tifa and everyone a couple of weeks ago," she admitted.

"She's from the distant past!" Marlene chimed in. Like before, Barret gaped, open-mouthed and silent, for a moment.

"Er, well," Light tried to explain. "Distant past, possibly another world altogether, we're still not sure yet. It's not like I was counting the years pass when I was in crystal stasis."

Barret collected himself. "You know it don't surprise me at all, now that I think about it. All kinds of people with crazy histories're drawn to this place."

All things considered, Barret took Light's story in marvelous stride. He seemed especially liable to believe the wild tale when he heard of Vincent's involvement, though he wouldn't say _why_ this was so. But the moment faded away and the conversation turned to more jovial things for a time. After a while, Tifa returned bearing lunch. Barret only barely paused to thank Tifa for said lunch before digging deep into his French dip sandwich.

"By the way T—, you hear about them attacks on little villages?" he asked between bites. Tifa and Light stopped chewing their own meals and looked up at him.

"We heard what they put on the news; you know something about them we don't?" Tifa responded. She had put down her food altogether. If anyone outside the Turks had access to specialized information about the raids, it would be Barret. He was at least as good at digging as he was at drilling.

"They got Junon early just this mornin'. Ain't had time to put it on the news, but they got it."

"Modeoheim, North Corel," Light began in a murmur, "Gongaga, Nibelheim, Fort Condor, and now Junon." She spoke them in order of their reported raids. "Tifa, didn't you say those were all near reactors?"

Tifa looked like she was about to be sick. "All the reactors outside of Midgar, yes."

"Wait, wait," Barret held up his hands. "There's nothin' at any of those reactors anymore. Why would anyone need to get at 'em, and why attack the towns?" The women lifted their shoulders in shrugs of defeat.

"They're looking for something," Marlene chimed in. The adults started; they had almost forgotten the quiet girl was still sitting at the table with them.

"Sweetie, what do you mean?" Tifa prodded gently. Marlene took a moment to organize her thought.

"Well, what if they heard that something was at one of the old reactors? But they don't know which one. So they have to check all of them. And they have to make sure that no one from a nearby town found it first."

Tifa, Light, and Barret all exchanged looks of dread as each digested Marlene's insightful analysis.

"If they haven't found what they're looking for yet—" began Tifa.

"That would explain why they kept moving on to different towns," finished Light.

"But if they didn't find it at Junon—" Barret started.

"Then they're out of options," Tifa answered.

"They're coming here next," Light gave voice to all of their collective fears.

The adults all breathed a collective sigh. None of them were particularly hungry anymore. Tifa started doing some mental calculations out loud.

"Whoever they are, they hit six towns in less than three weeks and they haven't exactly been making what looks like a logical circle. They can hit hard and move fast, and Junon isn't that far away. Realistically, Barret how long do you think we have before they bring the fight to us?"

The large man performed his own mental calculation. "Tomorrow?" he speculated at long last. "I better stay in town an extra day, just in case, huh?"

Tifa nodded. "That would be good." Light began poking at her phone. "What are you doing?"

"Vincent needs to know what we know," she responded without looking up from the tiny glowing screen. Her thumbs moved with surprisingly practiced-looking motions as she typed out her message.

"That old toothpick's still around?" Barret seemed shocked. "Wouldn't have expected that."

"We haven't managed to drive him off yet," Tifa answered. Then the other two fell quiet as Light finished up her text message and sent it off: _Barret says raiders hit Junon, maybe coming to Edge next. Fyi._

They stayed quiet, picked listlessly at their lunch, and Light's phone buzzed with an incoming call.

"Vincent," she answered. "You got my message then."

"If you're sure, and Barret is sure about that information, the best thing to do is get you all out until they're done and gone."

Light excused herself from the table and headed back to the store-room. "Are you insane?" she hissed into the phone so the others wouldn't hear. "The best fighters on this entire damned continent are right here, and you want us to leave? And what, abandon all the civilians to whatever fate the raiders have in store for them?"

Vincent was silent on the other end of the line for a few moments. "Do you know what the raiders have done to those towns?"

"Do you?" Light retorted. "You haven't been to any of them since the attacks."

"Perhaps not, but I've got contacts from the old days. Listen to me, Light, it's not something I would want you to be caught in the middle of. And what about Marlene? And Denzel? They _can't_ fight for themselves. I would see them out of harm's way, and I would just as soon see you out of harm's way."

"I was a soldier, Vincent. I can def—"

"I know," he cut her off sharply. "I know you _can_, Light. Just because you _can_ doesn't mean you _should... _If you don't have to, I don't want you to put yourself in danger." It was Light's turn to go silent for a moment. She turned her face away from the phone and seethed through her nose. How _dare_ he tell her to do anything other than the job she'd been training for since she was a teenager. How dare he tell her to stand back like a mere civilian. She was in the Guardian Corps. Her job, her entire life back in Bodhum was the protection of people from anything bigger and stronger and more sinister than themselves. Light closed her eyes.

"I won't leave all these innocent people to fend for themselves," she said at last, with a note of finality that Vincent could not hope to counter. Not as though he had time to answer anyway; at that moment a dull but powerful thud shook the floor under Light's feet and the crate of bottles on which she sat rattled. "Did you feel that?" she asked once the dust around her settled.

"Did you _see_ that?" came his answer.

"I didn't see anything; I'm not by a window. What happened?"

"Explosion near the old Shinra building in Midgar, what's left of it," Vincent reported. "If I had to guess, I'd say they're here now."

"Time to give them a proper welcome then," Light growled.

"No!" Vincent cried. "Stay there. Keep Tifa and Barret and the kids there. If Cloud's there, keep him too. I'm coming over and we'll regroup from there."

"If you think I'm going to sit still—"

"I'm not telling you to sit still," he answered abruptly. "I'm telling you to sit still long enough for us to make a strategy. You've got a good head on your shoulders, Light; don't let it go to waste just to prove me wrong. I'll see you all in a few minutes." He hung up.

Light ran back through to the restaurant area, and it was a good thing she did: Barret's metal hand had transformed into a gun and he was shouting "Goddamn!" as he stared out the window at the plume of black smoke rising from somewhere behind the buildings across from the bar.

"Barret, whatever you do, stay here, stay calm, and find Denzel. Tifa, I need you to call Cloud, leave a message if you have to, but tell him to get himself back here _now_. Vincent is coming and he'll help us get a plan of attack together. Marlene, help me talk down all these customers." Barret and Tifa took a moment to stand, open-mouthed, at their pink-haired companion. For Tifa's part, she had no idea Light could be so authoritative, and the effect was every bit as shocking at first as it was motivating a moment later. Barret was somewhat less surprised; the woman's handshake had been warning enough that she knew what she was about, and was not to be trifled with. His open gaping was more from the fact that she had asked him to find Denzel, and it was at that moment he realized he had not seen the boy since his arrival.

The large man immediately nodded and headed upstairs, calling Denzel's name all the while. Tifa, finding that she had left her cell phone upstairs, ran back behind the bar and dialed Cloud's number from the landline. Marlene flitted from table to table, urging the customers to remain in their seats and not panic while Light took up a similar position to the patrons seated in the bar area. As they went about their business, the rumble of another, closer explosion rocked the ground below them.

"Cloud, tell me you saw that or felt it or something," Tifa pleaded into the phone. "Exactly, that's why we need you to come back. If you left any pieces of your Fusion Sword in the church, get them and bring them and yourself back here. And we haven't seen Denzel around so... Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. Okay. Oh, and Cloud? You take care of yourself." She hung up and began directing the customers near the windows to back further into the room.

Barret returned from upstairs with a dazed and shaken Denzel trailing behind him.

"T-Tifa, Light," the boy whispered hoarsely, with a wild look in his big eyes. Light was standing closer to him, and without thinking, she pulled the boy into a tight hug. She said nothing, but she knew there was nothing to say. She knew the look of horror, of memory, in Denzel's eyes; she knew the signs of post-traumatic stress, and she knew there was little she could realistically do to calm him down. All she could do was try to remind him that he was safe inside the bar.

Vincent arrived through the front door at almost the same time Cloud burst in through the back store-room. The customers jumped in near unison at the sudden noise, but they were regular patrons and they recognized the two men on sight.

"You're here," Tifa breathed. She had been sitting at one of the bar stools, fidgeting in the anxiety of waiting. She led Cloud and Vincent to the table in the corner where Light and Barret were standing, deep in discussion. The two kids sat in chairs around that same table, holding each others' hands to stay calm.

"Alright, Commander, we're all here," the dark-haired woman reported. Cloud scoffed softly.

"Who put her in charge?" he muttered. The resentment was clear in his voice. Light turned her blue eyes on him and let them bore in before she spoke.

"Alright, Cloud, let's have it out. What is your problem with me?" she demanded. Cloud shrugged.

"I just don't see why we should be taking orders from you. You're not our leader. You didn't even exist in our lives a month ago," he retorted.

"This isn't afternoon tea, Spiky," she spat. "You wanna be the leader and make the tough decisions?"

"Not really, but—"

"Then as your commanding _officer_, I order you to pipe down and leave those decisions to me," she snapped. Cloud didn't back down.

"You might have been an officer in your time, Lightning, but that doesn't mean anything here and now." He would have continued on a tirade, but Light silenced him.

"I have experience in organized, urban, _military_ combat. I've given orders and held and the lives of an entire platoon in the palm of my hands. What do you have, Cloud? A devil-may-care attitude won't protect these people; it won't even protect yourself." She was standing barely a foot from the man. He tried to hold her venomous gaze, but he felt himself falter. Still, he had one more card to play.

"I won't take the orders of someone I don't trust, officer or not. You could even be working for whoever is behind this."

Tifa objected, Vincent twitched like he was itching to tackle Cloud to the ground, but neither of them had time; in a moment almost too fast to be seen, Lightning had landed a right hook on Cloud's cheek and sent the man sprawling out on the floor. No one knew when Light had found time to run upstairs to fetch her weapon case, but it was there on her hip, and in a moment her gunblade appeared in her hand, pointed directly at Cloud's chest as he lay helpless on the ground.

"The citizens of Edge don't have any time for insubordination or conspiracy theories, and neither do I. _I'm_ going to help these innocent people. You can help me, or you can huddle in the basement with the civilians and the children, but you will not jeopardize this mission, or I will shoot you down myself. If you _are_ going to help, then get back in line, soldier."

She turned back to the group, all of whom were dumbstruck. Light started by handing a walkie-talkie to each adult around the table.

"First of all, we need to know that what we're up against really is human. If there are any eidol— summons involved, we need to know and be able to prepare. To that end, Vincent, you're on point. Scout them out. We need numbers and positions. The radios are all programmed to channel 4.

"Tifa, you said that you have some materia stored away for emergencies; well, now would be a good example of a time we could use it. Prepare a kit of anything you've got that would be useful in battle. That means materia, potions, down, anything you can think of.

"Barret, I want every single one of those pockets that doesn't have the radio in it to be filled with extra ammo. And don't run out; if we need to fall back, you're all the cover fire we've got.

"Cloud, are you with us?" Light finally returned her attention to Cloud, who had managed to regain his feet while Light was giving orders. His back and face were bruised, but not so badly as his pride. He clenched his teeth and swallowed that pride, along with a generous dose of his own blood. There were bigger things at stake than his feud with the pink-haired woman.

"Say the word, Commander," he managed to grunt.

Light nodded. "Your bike is fast and mobile in tight spaces. You'll be working with Vincent. Divert their attention away from Barret and Tifa and myself, herd them to a bottleneck point if we find one, and if you get close enough don't hesitate to slice one open."

"Yes ma'am," he agreed. "And what will you be doing?"

Light held up her gunblade. "Sniping when I can, slicing when I have to, and calling on an old friend if it becomes absolutely necessary.

"Alright. Vincent, you head out first. Start your recon. The rest of us are going to get these people into the cellar and get our kits and ammo prepared." Vincent nodded and turned to go.

"Light," he called from the doorway. "After you get the civilians taken care of, make sure you put your armor back on before you get to fighting."

She smiled. "Will do. See you soon." Vincent nodded again. In a moment, he was gone. Overtaking the roofs of the low buildings was simple for one as agile as he, and Vincent soon located some forward skirmishing parties. He watched, waited, counted, reported, and watched some more.

Meanwhile, Cloud was refueling his bike in the back while Tifa and Barret filed the civilians into the cellar.

"You'll be safe down here, we promise," Tifa said with an encouraging smile as she waved the men and women down.

"I'm going to help Light into her armor; it takes forever to get all those buckles done up," Tifa explained to Barret as they stood alone in the empty bar. Cloud had just left to regroup with Vincent. Barret nodded.

"You be careful on the way over, you hear?" Barret warned.

"I always am," Tifa promised with a smile. The large man sighed. He wrapped his left arm around Tifa in a crushing hug.

"I'm serious here, T—. You're the closest thing my girl has to a ma, 'n' I can't have you getting' hurt doin' somethin' careless."

"It's an occupational hazard," she reminded him. "But I hear you, and I _will_ be careful. Keep your radio on, and we'll call for you if anything happens."

Barret held onto the one-armed hug a moment longer. He wasn't sure how to impress on Tifa just how absolutely serious he was being in that moment. He couldn't afford to lose Tifa, as much for his own sake as for his little girl's. At last, he let her go and headed out. Tifa remained standing there, stunned, before regaining her senses and running to the stairs, taking them two at a time, and helping Light into her plate mail.

"Were you really an officer in your army back then?" Tifa asked as she tightened one of the straps on Light's leg.

"I was a sergeant," Light answered. "Non-commissioned officer, low on the chain of command, but a higher rank than privates and other enlisted men."

"So should we call you Sarge? Or Commander?" the dark-haired woman asked, only half-joking. Light took a moment to think about it seriously.

"The Guardian Corps doesn't exist anymore, and even if it did I think my serving Etro officially counts as defection. I guess that means I'm not really a sergeant. But if I'm in charge of this mission, then Commander is technically appropriate."

Aye, aye, Commander," Tifa said brightly and with a salute. Light rolled her eyes and smiled.

"Feels like forever since I've had a mission with an objective," she said, almost wistfully.

Getting Light into her armor only took a few minutes with both of them working at it. Tifa stuffed her pockets and her pack with as much materia and potions and useful items as she could find and pulled on her black gloves.

"Ready," she said, and the two of them stepped out of the bar.

Using the communications from Vincent, Cloud, and Barret, they found the main body of the camp. On the way, the women almost tripped over the bodies of a skirmishing party. Their clothes were black and dark blue, of some thick woven fabric that looked like duck. Thin, bright blue stripes ran vertically up parts of their bodies and their faces were completely covered in helmets that appeared to double as gas masks. Light and Tifa looked at each other. The uniforms were completely alien to both of them.

One of them had a long coat and more ornate insignia on his chest and belt.

"An officer," Light said, and Tifa could only nod agreement. Light bent down and checked the man's pockets. "Nothing.

"I don't know if a party this small would have its own tech sergeant, or even if what we're looking at _is_ the whole party, but if there is one here, we should find them, and fast."

"Why do we need a tech sergeant?" asked Tifa.

"If we can get our hands on their comm equipment we might be able to find out what they're planning as a counterstrike, if they're setting up any ambushes, that kind of thing. And if anyone is carrying a written copy of their orders, it would be the commanding officer or the tech sergeant. Since the officer had nothing..."

"Maybe Barret or Cloud picked it up first?" Tifa suggested.

"And didn't think to mention it?" Light replied quietly. "I doubt it; anyway, I don't think either of them would think to look for that kind of thing."

They never did find a tech sergeant, nor any other officers among that small party. They followed Vincent's directions to a rendezvous point near the enemy's main camp.

When they got there, they found that the battle had already been joined. Barret was literally surrounded by rings of bodies of enemies that had fallen before his mechanical fire-arm. Cloud was using the speed of his motorcycle to move between patches of burning debris, and by extension, their smoke. The visual distraction was enough to confuse his enemies and he cut them down like hanging fruits. Vincent was nowhere to be seen.

What really caught Light's attention however, was the black demonic _thing_ with leathery red wings that floated before a score of enemy soldiers and civilian passers-by. Abruptly, the thing fell out of the air and clutched its head with shiny clawed hands as though forcing back a splitting headache. All of a sudden, the demon-thing shuddered and a shock wave blasted out from it, knocking everyone nearby from their feet. It let out a piercing, throat-ripping scream and immediately took up an enemy soldier in its hands and tore him in half. Light watched as cloth separated, then skin separated, then she nearly wretched as she heard the pop of cartilage and bones snapping out of their sockets. Blood spurted from the sudden fissure in the man. It coated the demon-thing, which only seemed to heighten the thing's lust for battle and slaughter.

Light looked away as the thing took up another man. In that moment of not seeing it, she felt _it_. The presence of a thing she had not had to face since the days when she had served Etro.

_No._ She had done battle with that thing and had shut it down. It wasn't supposed to be back. It wasn't supposed to be able to hurt anyone anymore.

But there it was. In the shape of a demonic humanoid, Chaos was there, and it was destroying her enemies. But did that make it her ally? Or simply a tool by which to fight fire with fire?

Between Barret and...Chaos...they made short work of the enemy soldiers. The former's ring of bodies began to ray outward like a macabre diorama showing Midgar's plates in the days before Meteorfall. The latter quickly became surrounded by a ring of dismembered body parts and bloody mud. It was impossible to tell if the sight or the smell was more repulsive, but either way, Light remained paralyzed against doing anything. The same seemed to afflict the poor soldiers who could not flee the battlefield fast enough to escape Chaos's clutches.

That paralysis finally melted when Chaos ran out of enemies to rip to shreds and it grabbed hold of a civilian.

_No!_ Light's mind screamed. Without thinking, she called on Odin.

It appeared to her as a giant, pale, armored horse. In the time it took for Odin to materialize, Chaos had stolen the life from the civilian in much the same way as it had the enemy soldiers. Odin stamped its feet in anger at the display. Light leapt onto its back as Chaos grabbed at another nearby civilian too frozen with fear even to run. Together Light and Odin ran down the demonic-looking Chaos. Odin reared up on its hind legs and kicked Chaos back.

The civilian regained enough presence of mind to run, or rather limp, away as fast as possible. The remaining enemy soldiers looked on the scene in horror for just a moment before they also fell back and fled. Chaos returned to its feet and Odin kicked again. And again. And again.

Finally Chaos fell and did not arise. Light knew she had not killed it, but incapacitation would be enough for her purposes for now. She dismounted and dismissed Odin.

In the time it took for Odin to disappear, Chaos morphed before all the party's eyes. The wings folded under into the waves of a cloak. The metallic claws retracted into metal armor. Its body shrunk until it was the size of a thin man in his late twenties.

Light gasped and nearly lost her footing as she looked down on none other than Vincent.

She remembered back to that first night after she had awoken. That animal presence inside him, that she only felt when he was sleeping.

Had it been Chaos the whole time? She trembled.

That dream she had, where Caius became Vincent before her eyes.

She had known it all along, though she could not have realized it. An angry lump welled in her throat.

Vincent awoke, unsure of where he was, only truly aware of a pain in his chest like he'd been kicked by a horse, which of course he had, in a manner of speaking. He lifted his head and the first thing he saw was Light looking at him in horror. The first thing he smelled was human viscera.

Oh, no.

He stood up as quickly as he could, looked around him, at his handiwork, and winced. There would be hell to pay for this.

Light swallowed hard and turned away. "I'll just...take the long way back to the bar," she told Tifa quietly as she walked away, anywhere but there. Tifa nodded, collected everyone else, Vincent included, and took them all back to 7th Heaven. She and Cloud were the least blood-covered, so they volunteered to get the civilians out of the basement and send them home.

It was dark when Light got back to the bar. She was still furious, and fuming. The moment she entered the restaurant, empty but for Vincent sitting alone at a table, she attacked.

"What the hell was that?" she demanded, staring daggers at him. Vincent wouldn't meet her gaze.

"I'm sorry—" he started, but Light cut him off.

"You're sorry?! No, you're Chaos. Aren't you." It wasn't really a question. Every muscle in her body was tensed for fight or flight. Her breathing was tightly controlled.

Vincent took a deep breath. "Yes. You're right." He braced himself for an explosive reaction, but it never came.

Light was stunned; she hadn't expected him to give in so quickly.

"You didn't think to _tell me_ _you were a time bomb?_" She finally managed. Her voice was barely audible and it quaked.

Vincent relented and met her eyes. "It's not like that," he protested, but Light would have none of it.

"Really, what's it like? You've had that monster inside you all this time—"

"I can control it!" he yelled.

"Like you controlled it today!" she screamed back. "There's an innocent man out there dead, torn to pieces, because you _couldn't_ control it!" He looked away from her and blinked at the stinging in his eyes. Her words were cruel, but it was not in spite of their accuracy; they were cruel _because_ she was absolutely right.

"Yes," he whispered. "I lost control of Chaos, I misjudged my power. _I_ am responsible for that man's life." Vincent paused to take a steadying breath. "I also _saved_ a lot of people."

Light's hand balled into a fist. She was breathing hard through her nose. "And that justifies it?" she seethed. She was so close to boiling point. "You're saying that man was a worthy sacrifice?"

"I couldn't tell you if he deserved to die," Vincent snapped. "Even if he did, he didn't deserve to die like _that_." He took a deep, steadying breath. "I'm not proud of the fact that I lost control. It's been so long since my last incident, I thought I had it completely under control." He paused and stared at the ground, ashamed to meet Light's eyes.

She wasn't willing to give up the fight just yet. "You should have told me about Chaos," she admonished. Vincent looked up at her; an angry glint flicked through his eyes.

"When?" he asked icily. "When would have been a good time to tell you? What would have been the best way to say it?"

Light crossed her arms. "I don't have a good answer for that. All I know is I've been spending a lot of time with you since I woke up, and it would have been nice to know I was spending my time with a monster."

"Stop calling me a monster," he warned, but his voice was hollow. His words were more of a plea than any sort of threat. Light remained unmoved.

"You can pretend and you can hide it all you want, but you _are_ a monster," she answered evenly. She turned on her heel and walked away, toward the back of the bar. She went upstairs.

For the first time since the battle, Vincent took a real deep breath. He could feel the tightness in his chest, the tension in the muscles of his back and neck. He just wanted to lay down and go to sleep, but he had the feeling Light wasn't really done arguing with him for tonight. Or maybe he wasn't done arguing with her. Generally he didn't mind letting her have the last word – it was better to keep the peace than to be "right" – but he would not sit by as she called him a monster. If there was just one thing in their entire relationship he needed to be right about, that was it.

But he never got the chance to present his counterargument. Within minutes of her going upstairs, Light returned. In record time, she had changed out of her armor and into a more mobile outfit: it consisted of a pair of dark grey shorts and a purple top that eerily matched the shade, if not the texture, of the dress she had worn to the theater. Even in that stressful moment he was struck by how well that shade of purple complemented her skin and eyes. If he ignored her mussed hair and the full backpack over her shoulder, Vincent might have mistaken the hasty but well-coordinated outfit for a magazine spread. But her hair _was_ mussed, like she'd thrown the shirt on in a hurry, and there _was_ a pack on her shoulder, like she was preparing for a camping trip. It was all he could do to ask what she was doing before she reached the door.

She stopped with her hand on the doorknob and turned her head a little in his direction, though she would not face him straight-on. "I can't stay here in this place if I can't trust you to tell me the truth," she said simply and quietly. Then, before he could even respond, she turned the knob and left the bar.

"Light!" he called after her from the doorway, but it was no use. She didn't answer, didn't turn around, didn't do anything but stride off into the night. She disappeared into a crowd of pedestrians without so much as a second glance over her shoulder.

Vincent stood there for a moment, perfectly stunned. She had really done it; she left him. He didn't know what to do, so he growled and slammed his fist into the wall. A nearby picture, a clumsy crayon self-portrait of Marlene with a large gun where her right arm should have been, fell from the wall and clattered on the floor. The frame was undamaged but there was a nasty crack in the glass right over the words 'how're you supposed to look after your family if you can't even look after yourself?' written in crayon at the bottom. Vincent collapsed into a nearby chair and couldn't will himself to move. The crayon words floated in his head for a long time.

He couldn't have stopped Light from leaving any more than he could stop Chaos from taking over only a few hours prior. The very truth of that concept hit him every bit as hard as his own fist had just hit the wall.

Tifa and the two kids got back late that night. She had suggested that they go out to dinner with Barret, as a celebration of his being back in town, but really she had wanted to give Light and Vincent their space. Tifa had seen Light's reaction to Vincent after the battle, and it wouldn't do to expose either Marlene or Denzel to the fight that she knew was going to break out.

So she had kept them out late, to the point that Barret had to help carry Marlene home from the restaurant while Tifa herself kept a bleary-eyed Denzel from wandering in the wrong direction. She ushered everyone inside.

"The kids' room is at the top of the stairs on the right," she reminded Barret as he looked questioningly from her to Marlene and back again. She would have guided him upstairs herself, but she saw Vincent slouched in a chair by the door. "Barret, could you take them both upstairs?" she asked as she gently tilted her head toward Vincent. Barret understood, nodded, and started for the stairs. Tifa pulled up another chair.

"Vincent?" she asked quietly as she put one hand on his forearm. He started and looked about frantically until he got his bearings and met the woman's gaze. There were long hanks of dark hair over his face, but he did not bother to push them back.

His eyes were red.

"Tifa," he croaked, his gravelly voice so hoarse with emotion that he was barely intelligible. "Tifa, she's gone." His head dropped back down to the the table and a low noise halfway between a moan and a whimper escaped him. "She's gone," he repeated helplessly. His thick hair and thicker cloak muffled his voice, but Tifa still caught a series of "she's gone, I'm so stupid, she's really gone." She rested her hand more firmly on his forearm.

"What happened?" she asked. Her voice was still as gentle as she could make it, though she couldn't mask all of her curiosity.

Vincent sniffed hard. "She called me a monster..." he trailed off. "I should have told her sooner, I'm so stupid."

At this point Tifa stood up and went over to the bar. She walked behind the counter and reached up to the top shelf along the wall. Around this time, Barret came back downstairs. He and Tifa had an entire conversation comprised of meaningful glances and a lazy salute as Barret made as stealthy an exit as possible out the back door. When Tifa returned to Vincent's table, she was carrying a fancy lead crystal bottle full of amber liquid and two shot glasses. She poured out two shots.

"Here," she said as she put one shot beside Vincent's arm. He looked at the drink quizzically.

"What is it?" he finally asked as he sniffed it.

"Scotch," she replied. "Now drink it."

He drank. He downed the shot in one go. "It tastes like tree nuts and peat," he said with his face screwed up in distaste. "And smoke."

Tifa smiled and downed hers. "That's how you know it's working," she said knowingly. "Have another one." She refilled his shot glass. This time around he took the time to sip it slowly. Probably to avoid getting too drunk rather than to appreciate the flavor.

"Tifa, why are we doing shots of scotch?" he finally asked as he was about halfway done with his second serving. It seemed an awfully expensive drink to go through as quickly as he and Tifa were doing. But Tifa had her reasons.

"Let me tell you a story, Valentine," she began. "I've been in love with the same guy since I was a kid. But this guy, he's got the all emotional intelligence of a piece of dry toast. And just like a piece of toast, with no butter or jam for company, he's got this notion that he's all alone, just one piece of dry, lonely toast against the world. And let me tell you, I have been _pulling my hair out_ trying to make him see that he's _not_ alone in this world and that there are people who love him and want him to be happy."

"You're talking about Cloud," Vincent mumbled.

"Obviously," Tifa responded as she refilled their shot glasses. "Up until recently I'd been thinking that maybe I was fighting an uphill battle and that he wouldn't really get better. Lately he has been, getting better I mean, and I'm grateful for that, but everything got really screwed up when that Remnant business happened. Honestly, if Sephiroth ever comes back, I won't be surprised if he, that is, Cloud, relapses again. And if he does, I don't know if I'll be able to handle it. You know how I handled it last time, not to mention all the other crap leading up to that?"

Vincent shook his head. Tifa lifted her glass.

"Scotch shots," she said simply. Vincent snorted.

"Some women just go binge shopping," he noted. Tifa refilled his glass again as she replied.

"Ha. If _I'm_ going to pour a lot of money down the drain, I at least want it to be on something that will get me drunk."

"Cheers to that. I like the way you think, if not your taste in booze."

Tifa shook her head. "Give it a few minutes, you won't be able to taste anything anymore."

True enough, after four or five shots, Vincent was starting to lose feeling in his lips and tongue. Luckily, his body compensated by starting a tingling sensation in his fingertips and making his head and toes feel a little too warm for comfort.

"My head," he slurred as he tried to stand up. "I need some s-sleep..." his knees buckled under his weight and he only just caught himself on the table's edge.

"You shouldn't try go home, you're drunk," Tifa slurred back. "C'mon, you can sl-sleep in Cloud's bed. He won't mind."

Vincent eyed Tifa through eyes narrowed as much in suspicion as in an attempt to put her image in focus. "Cloud snot here?" he asked. Tifa shook her head heavily.

"No he said he was gonna...visit...someone... I don't remember. He's not here. C'mon."

Neither of them could walk in a straight line, but somehow Tifa managed to get them upstairs and installed in their beds. It wasn't until morning that she realized _she_ was sleeping in Light's bed and Vincent was passed out cold in Tifa's.


	9. Chapter 9: Fallout

That day was pure hell. Tifa kept the bar closed; after yesterday's events, customers weren't exactly lining up outside her door, and anyway the pounding in her head would not tolerate the kind of noise a working kitchen would cause.

Vincent was no better off, physically. When she thought about it, Tifa had never seen Vincent get drunk before. She had always assumed he could not, due to Chaos, but the evidence to the contrary sat before her, slouched in a chair at a corner table with his head on his arms and a tall glass of untouched water within easy reach. Tifa hadn't had the courage to ask him for more details about the fight or Light's possible whereabouts, but she knew that conversation would come soon enough, and she might as well let their heads clear first.

Barret came by that day. Out of respect for his friends' condition, he remained uncharacteristically quiet even when he greeted his little girl. In a display of affectionate consideration rarely seen directed toward anyone other than Marlene herself, he popped into the kitchen shortly after his arrival and whipped up an industrial-sized vat of macaroni and cheese.

"You could use some starch," was all he offered for explanation when Tifa raised her eyebrow at the vat. "And, ya know, cheese: it's good for you," he finally added sheepishly as he set a bowl on the bar before Tifa's hunched form.

She managed a small smile and poked at the bowl with her fork. Her stomach would only take a few bites for the first hour or so, but they were as delicious as she could possibly want. Barret definitely had not skimped on the cheese, and it tasted like he hadn't been incredibly discriminatory about how many or what kinds of cheeses he used. The result was a dish that didn't taste exactly the same from bite to bite, but every bite fell under the same savory umbrella of comforting dairy products. And where had Barret been hiding his cooking skills all these years anyway?

"Don't go thinkin' I got skill; this is the only thing I can make," he told her when she gave voice to her inner thoughts.

It wasn't until just after noon, after her head cleared, that Barret began to probe her for information. What happened, where was Light, what did you give Vincent to turn him into _that_?

"And where's Spiky in all of this?" the big man finally inquired when his previous questions were met with "I don't know" and "scotch shots".

The woman shrugged. "Church, maybe? He was really upset yesterday, not that he went out of his way to say so."

Barret nodded thoughtfully. "Upset about what Ligh— about, er, what _she_ said to him yesterday?" he lowered his voice so Vincent wouldn't overhear – not that Vincent appeared to be cognizant of anything going on around him. Tifa nodded her assent while she picked at her mac and cheese.

"It really got to him. I mean, think about it: Cloud's had some of the best military training money can buy, he's a good fighter, but he's not exactly a great leader of men, and never has been. He doesn't make difficult decisions easily or well, but more importantly, he can't handle it when someone calls him out on his own defects. When she put him in his place, I think it snapped something in him, made him indignant and at the same time ashamed of his own inadequacies. He'd never admit as much to me, but knowing him, that's what I'd guess is going through his head."

"You seem to know a lot about what goes on in his head," Barret remarked. Tifa shrugged noncommittally.

"We've just lived together for a long time."

Barret shook his head. "That's the part I don't get. I like Spiky: he's quiet, he shows up with his boots on, does his job and goes home, but those ain't exactly traits what make for a good life partner."

"I agree it's not ideal," Tifa conceded. She sighed heavily. Her next words were very quiet, and they sounded to Barret like a whimper of pure misery. "I think the Cloud I fell in love with died while he still worked for Shinra. I keep hoping that eager, adventurous farm boy will return to me, but... Well, let's just say it doesn't really upset me anymore when he stays out for a week at a time."

They were silent for a minute while Tifa carefully chewed over another bite of macaroni. Finally, "Want me to shoot 'im once or twice?" Barret offered with a mischievous grin. As if to demonstrate, he waved his mechanical hand once in the air while he spoke.

She smiled. "No, that's okay, but it's sweet of you to offer."

A look of affronted shock passed over Barret's expressive features."Sweet! Hell, it ain't sweet. It's just me wantin' you to have the best, and nothin' brings out the best in a man like being under fire."

"You can't put him 'under fire' all the time, though, so you know eventually the underlying issues have to get worked out," Tifa reminded him.

"The hell I can't!" Barret roared, though his angry tone was tempered considerably by the smile plastered on his face. "You deserve no less. I'd have given you the best myself if you'd ever let me."

Tifa continued to pick at her food, but then abruptly dropped that activity to look up and gape. "What did you just say?" she finally managed to ask.

"That you deserve the best?"

"The part after that," Tifa prompted. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Barret...was that true? Do you really feel that way?"

He looked like he was internally cursing to himself for having let slip a deeply buried secret. Even with the cat out of the bag, he wasn't willing to answer directly. "I ain't exactly known for lyin' to you, T—," was all he would say.

For a moment, she was speechless. He _wasn't_ known for lying, not to anyone, and definitely not to her. Tifa knew, from the moment they had met, that anything that came out of his mouth was, if decorated with imaginative cursing, still factual at the heart. He had always given her nothing short of the truth, no matter what the topic. He had even told her things he would never have admitted to anyone else, things about his frustrations and insecurities about his ability to provide for his daughter, about his guilt for events long past, about the chronic pains he felt in his right arm due to his mechanical hand appliance.

"Why haven't you ever mentioned this before?" she finally asked.

The big man looked more uncomfortable than Tifa or anyone else in recent memory had ever seen him. "Never a need. You've always been with Spiky, and happy to stay that way."

"Always?" Tifa repeated, the surprise in her voice obvious. "Just how long has this been going on?"

He was silent for a moment, his face screwed up as if trying to remember the date. "You remember that night Marlene kept callin' you 'mommy' and then sayin' sorry for it, 'n' you told her it's okay, sweetie, call me whatever you like? That's when I first noticed."

Tifa gasped as the memory of that time came back. "That was well before Meteorfall. That was before the threat of Meteorfall even existed."

"Been a while," Barret summarized for her.

"And all this time I never knew."

"I was goin' for that. No need to mess up what you had goin' for you."

They remained there on either side of the bar, staring alternately at each other and at the bowl of mac and cheese like awkward teenagers. Barret cleared his throat. "Anyway, the offer stands, unless you straight-up say no. Then I'll never mention it again 'n' we can pretend this never happened." Tifa was silent for a minute. She coughed, more to buy one more moment than to clear anything from her throat or lungs.

"Could I, um, have some time to consider? You've had a couple years to think it through, but this is new on my end..." she stammered. Barret agreed to that, and he promptly, mercifully, ended the awkward scene by disappearing into the kitchen to fill up a mac and cheese bowl for Vincent, who had since recovered from his hangover enough to feel hungry without also feeling nauseous.

Meanwhile, Tifa mentally weighed her options. What were the pros of accepting Barret's offer? The cons? Heretofore their relationship had been one of strong but ever platonic friendship, driven primarily by their camaraderie through work and combat. She had admired him as a leader, as a fighter, and as a father, and she had truly loved him as one of her closest friends. But could she love him as a man?

Looking at him as he encouraged Vincent to eat, it was true he didn't exactly match what she had imagined as her physical ideal, but when she pushed away the image of Cloud she was compelled to notice that Barret wasn't exactly unattractive, and what's more, she had long since admitted to herself that his loudness and boisterous attitude was preferable to Cloud's eternal brooding.

She found herself thinking back to the hug Barret had given her yesterday before the battle. Suddenly she was remembering times before that: a different hug he had given her shortly after the bar opened, when she felt like breaking down from the stress of keeping her new business together; a day when he had found some time away from work and had taken both of his 'two favorite girls' to the beach – there was a photo from that day on the wall, with all three of them standing together behind a small sandcastle; every time he had made an easy, casual remark about the fact that Tifa was, for all intents and purposes, and as far as everyone involved was concerned, Marlene's mother. It unsettled her to realize that she felt more valued and beloved in looking back on those moments than in any moment she'd spent with Cloud since Meteorfall. Maybe there was something to his offer after all.

It would take more careful thinking on her part, but this was not the time, Tifa reminded herself sternly. As Vincent ate his mac and cheese he seemed to recover both mentally and physically. Soon he would be well enough to answer some questions about his altercation with Light. Maybe then they could start trying to figure out just what _exactly_ had set her off, and maybe even piece together where she might have gone.

"She called me a monster," he repeated in a voice coarser than his usual deep gravel. "I should have told her what I was, but I didn't know how. I think I was afraid she would do exactly what she did if she knew."

"Even if telling her would have been awkward, I think the way she really found out was worse," Tifa admonished, but her voice was gentle enough that Vincent knew she wasn't blaming him. "More shocking to her system, I mean."

The dark-haired woman chewed over what she had observed, and what Vincent had been able to tell her. Part of her was hurt that Light hadn't stayed long enough to talk it over with her. That she had just gotten mad and left. Then again, another part of her remembered Light's sudden shift during yesterday's crisis: the woman had transformed from her previous self, the firm but gentle, generous, modest, smiling Light, into the commanding, stern, no-frills, tactical valkyrie of Etro, Guardian Corps Sergeant Lightning, a knight in shining armor, complete with her own horse. Tifa remembered with a chill how Lightning (definitely _Lightning_, not the gentle alter-ego Light) had, at the slightest provocation, floored Cloud in a single punch; Lightning put up with nothing that would endanger her mission. Like a robot, she treated such dangers with a single, simple tactic: search and destroy.

Frankly, nothing endangered a mission quite like introducing a little Chaos.

Suddenly Light's disappearance made a lot of sense. Philosophically, Lightning was brittle. She was a creature of absolutes. You are good or you are evil. You are with me or against me. From 'mission start' she was utterly immune to anything resembling a grey area. Like any brittle thing, she did not bend; she snapped. Lightning would have destroyed Vincent if it meant a chance to destroy her old foe Chaos for good.

By contrast, Light was far more flexible. She thought things through. She considered alternate methods to her solutions, alternate solutions to her problems, alternate problems to solve. She was willing to play devil's advocate with herself if it meant finding the real problem, the real solution, and the real methods to keep everyone safe and happy.

More importantly, Tifa knew, Light loved Vincent whether or not she would admit it. So when Lightning would have ripped Vincent's head from his shoulders, Light forced a shred of grey area back into her reasoning, and she had no choice but to run from the situation to keep herself from going mad. Of course she couldn't wait around for Tifa to come home and talk about it; she had to go, or else there would have been blood.

That might have made Tifa feel better about herself, but it didn't help them figure out where Lightning might have gone in a huff.

Where _did_ you go when you were an avenging angel of justice and in the middle of a spat with your genetically modified demon boyfriend?

Not that any of them knew it, but she had gone to the church in the slums.

"What the—" Cloud had started when he saw her walk in. He noticed that she didn't stride in cool as you please with her Commander strut; she was walking like a normal person, tired, panting a little, with her hair disrupted by dust borne on the wind.

"Hi, Cloud," she greeted him sheepishly. "I'm sorry; I didn't know where else to go."

He leaned back, his body language defensive. "What are you doing here, Light?" He didn't sound either afraid or annoyed. He sounded like he was asking a question because it was expected, but he wasn't particularly interested in the answer.

Reading his tone correctly, Light skipped past the what and moved onto the when. "I'll be out of your hair by morning, I promise. I just need somewhere to be that isn't near _him_."

Cloud nodded. He wasn't an idiot; he had seen her fury when she had charged down Chaos with Odin. He had seen her fury triple when she got over the surprise that Vincent _was_ Chaos. Having himself needed to get away from that bar every now and then or else go insane, he could empathize with her. "Come have a seat," he offered, gesturing at his camping lantern, which was the only source of light in the whole cavernous church.

"Thanks," she said as she sat down across from him with the lantern between them.

"You did a good job coordinating us today," Cloud said after a pause. Light was taken aback; it was the closest thing to a compliment Cloud had ever offered her, not to mention one of the longest sentences up to this point.

"Er, thanks," she said again. Then, "I'm sorry I hit you earlier."

Cloud shrugged and picked at the dirt under his ungloved – for once – fingernails. "You hurt my pride more than my face. Though," he allowed as he lifted his hand gingerly to the site of the punch, "I think the face will have a nastier bruise. Not to mention my...well." He had rotated his seated body as if addressing his backside, but quickly turned himself back to face Light.

"I know you never liked me, and I understand why you wouldn't have wanted to follow my orders, but I should have handled it better," Light continued her apology.

"I didn't like you and you didn't like me. I still don't really _like_ you, Light, but after seeing you in action I can at least respect you."

"And I you," Light agreed. "This is probably the closest you and I will ever get to being friends, so instead of ruining it with small talk, maybe I can ask you for a bit of advice?"

Cloud made a gesture with his hand that Light took as an invitation to continue.

"I can't go back to Edge until things calm down..." she started. Cloud raised an eyebrow. "Okay, until _I_ calm down and am done being mad at him, but where should I go? Preferably somewhere with cell service so I can call Tifa and apologize to her, too."

Cloud thought long about that. "The most reliable cell service is right around Edge, and also in the Costa del Sol area, near the Icicle Inn, and in Wutai. For some reason you can also get pretty good service around the old reactors, even the ones that, er, blew up, instead of just getting shut down."

Light was nodding through his speech as she tried to remember where on her map these places were. Suddenly an idea hit her. She didn't know why, but she had the strongest desire to visit a very specific place, assuming that place was far from he-who-was-still-on-her-bad-side. "Vincent once told me there was another woman who was encased in crystal in much the same way I was," Light began tentatively.

"Lucrecia," Cloud supplied, for he had heard of the woman before, and had even once seen her in the...well, 'flesh' was probably the wrong word. Seen her in the crystal?

"Yes," Light agreed. "Is she, well, is she around? Somewhere I could visit her?"

The blond man nodded. "Her crystal is in a cave outside of my hometown, not far from the Nibelheim reactor. You've got a map, right? I could mark it for you."

Light fished the map out of her pack and handed it over. Cloud found a pen among the stash of possessions he kept in the church and made a circle near the dot that represented Nibelheim. "I don't remember the exact entrance to the cave, but it will be within this little circle," he promised.

"Then starting tomorrow, that's where I'm going," Light said grimly, with her mouth set.

"Right. Speaking of tomorrow, I should get some sleep. So should you, if you're traveling."

Light nodded her agreement. "Thanks again for letting me crash here tonight."

Cloud grunted as he turned off the battery-operated lantern. "Don't mention it. To Tifa. Ever." There was just enough levity in his voice that Light knew she wasn't being threatened, but she also knew he was serious about his request.

By this time they were in total darkness. Light used her pack as a pillow on the wood floor of the church, but the air was quite warm enough that she needed no blanket. Unfortunately she couldn't fall asleep right away and was left to sift through her own thoughts to the rhythm of Cloud's steady, near-silent breathing.

Those thoughts invariably turned to Vincent very quickly.

She silently berated herself for not giving him a better chance to explain himself. Were their positions reversed, would _she_ have been forthcoming about having Chaos inside of her?

No. Even without the knowledge that the other person was sworn to fight and defeat Chaos, she would not have admitted to having such a dark accursed power unless it was absolutely necessary.

Of course, by the time circumstances could be called 'absolutely necessary', they were almost certainly to the point that Chaos would need to come out to fight something.

Oh.

Well that explained Vincent's behavior, at least. Something inside of her, some buried part that was still the fresh teenage girl who was terrified of the world without her parents, something wholly emotional and not bound by the rules of reason and personal insight, still couldn't forgive him. That part of her was hurting, badly. Hurt that Vincent hadn't told her the truth, hurt that no one else had filled her in, though everyone seemed to be aware of his power, hurt that she herself had sensed the Chaos within him and hadn't known it for what it was...hurt that Vincent hadn't gone after her when she left. Hurt that she had left him in the first place.

And yet, she couldn't go back, not yet. Even if pride would have allowed her to go back to him so quickly, there was still the issue of dealing with Chaos when she met it again. Would she attack? Would it attack her and force her to defend? Would she simply try to accept it and keep going along her daily routine like everyone else?

Light had no answers to those questions, and until she allowed herself more time to think and plan and reconcile, she couldn't afford to go back and perhaps force herself into a confrontation.

She knew that if she messed this up, she or Vincent could end up dead.

A shudder moved up her spine in the dark as she considered that worst-case scenario, and another shudder followed it when she realized that at the moment, it was also her best-case scenario, because no matter who won such a duel, she would be released from the burden of fighting.

True to her words to Cloud, Light woke up early the next morning after a fitful, dream-plagued sleep. She took but a moment to regard the heavily breathing young man fast asleep a few feet away: it was something of a shame, she noted, that only when she was running away from everyone else was she able to meet on common ground with him.

"Perhaps our paths will cross again," she muttered to him. "If we do meet again, I'd rather it be on better terms than the ones we've existed in for the past few weeks."

Cloud gave no indication he had heard; he stirred not an inch in the cool morning air, except where his chest rose with his breath.

Light checked her pack, checked her map, and headed out of the church, all as stealthily as she could manage, so as to avoid waking up her brief roommate. In a minute, she had stolen out and was picking her way through the slums.

She figured she'd go back to the outskirts of Edge and join up with the highway to get her out to the coast, and from there take a ferry, maybe one of the ones that took tourists to Costa del Sol.

Her immediate path took her within a few blocks of yesterday's battlefield; she could smell the rot on the corpses that had been left in those largely deserted streets.

What if the raiders came back? she wondered to herself. She wouldn't be around to fight the bad guys off, or to keep the civilians safe.

"No excuses," she murmured to herself. "Tifa can keep people safe well enough without you. Vi— _he_ and Barret, and Cloud, were outnumbered ten to one at least and still won out. If the raiders come back, they can handle themselves."

Tifa. Light sighed. How badly she wanted to call! To explain, to apologize! Tifa had been better than a sister to her, after all. Sisters didn't run out on each other.

Another sister, abandoned? Light blinked back against the sting in her large blue eyes.

"I'll call," Light promised the air. She drew some measure of comfort from the sound of her own voice making such a promise. "I'll call and explain everything to her, but I need to put some distance between us first. Gotta get at least a hundred miles out. So if she asks me to come back I'll have a lot of time to think things over before I get there."

Light never once questioned the unspoken fact that if Tifa _did_ ask her to come home, she, Light, would turn around and head back before the call was ended.

That's what sisters do.

And if Vincent called and asked her to come home?

Light shook her head. "After what I said to him? I don't think he wants me to come back... Not any time soon..."


	10. Chapter 10: With Nothing But Resolve

Light's ferry arrived at the docks beside the Costa del Sol resort just as the sun was setting. Through a combination of hiking and hitching a ride on a small delivery truck, she had made the journey from Edge to the coast within one day's travel, and had boarded the last ferry for the evening.

The sweeping colors in the sky, bloody orange, rosy pink and dusty purple, not to mention the half-shades in between, made Light's breath catch in her throat. She hadn't had a chance to see a real clear sunset since she arrived in Edge; between the buildings and the constant cover of dust clouds and her schedule helping Tifa with the bar, there simply had not been enough opportunity. In fact, the last sunset she remembered seeing had been on the day she first woke up, when she and Vincent had camped in that mountaintop cave.

What would Vincent say if he could see this sunset with her now? Or rather, what would he feel without being able to say? That seemed to be more his way of doing things. On that first evening after her awakening, he had watched the entire sunset wordlessly, lost in the combination of colors and his own thoughts and memories. What had he gotten himself into, and what would the future hold? he had likely wondered to himself.

And what _would_ the future hold? Light stood on the pier beside the docked and tied ferry and laughed bitterly.

He had to have known that his secret would get out eventually.

"Stop that," Light scolded herself aloud. "Continuing to blame him won't get you anywhere." There was no one around to hear her talk to herself like a madwoman, so she didn't bother to keep her internal argument silent. Besides, her ultimate decisions and conclusions would feel more final if she heard them spoken.

She couldn't help that she wanted to keep blaming him. She could have lived and worked through it if he had suddenly come out as a vegan, or if he hated kittens, or if he was...something utterly outlandish, like a secret agent. But this was _Chaos_ she was dealing with. Chaos, as in, her mortal enemy, the being whose actions had resulted in the death of her baby sister, the being that hated the world so much that in between seeking to destroy Light it had tried to kill _itself _just so it wouldn't have to feel the pain of living anymore_—_

"Caius was miserable," Light muttered to the air, and her eyes widened as realization hit her like a blow to the chest.

Caius Ballad. Able to walk the timeline like it was a neighborhood farmer's market, immortal, eternally in the prime of a man's life after the foolishness of youth but before the resignation of middle age, physically and mentally powerful beyond most people's comprehension, and conveniently easy on the eyes, to the point that he might have been distracting if he wasn't constantly trying to kill one or more of the Farron sisters. _That_ Caius Ballad. All the things he had done in his lifetime and all the things he could yet do, and all he _wanted_ to do was die.

When her own survival had hinged on keeping him at bay, Light hadn't stopped to think about the ironies of his existence. Now that he was gone, she had a moment to wonder what it must have been like to walk in his supple, fur-lined boots.

Those boots were Vincent's now, for all intents and purposes. The Chaos problem was his to bear now, but was he a time-walker, too? Was he immortal? Did he keep some nefarious plot hidden behind that red mantle, a mysterious unbidden desire to cross swords with the warrior-goddess?

Did Vincent want to die?

That horrifying and novel thought haunted Light as she pulled out her sticker-encrusted cell phone. It was time to call Tifa, she decided. She needed to not think about Vincent for a moment, and more importantly, she needed to not think about him and dying in the same thought. Angry as she was with him in the moment of their fight, she never wished him harm, and certainly didn't wish him dead. Sometimes, however involuntarily, all she wished was for him to be _here_, beside her.

Light scrolled through her contacts and was about to dial when she remembered that it was still within 7th Heaven's business hours, and Tifa always left her cell upstairs and out of earshot when she was working. Light dialed the land-line instead.

"7th Heaven, this is Tifa," came the awaited familiar voice through the phone. At first, Light couldn't answer. She stood silent while she tried to swallow the lump in her throat and decide what to say. "Hello? Is someone there?" Tifa's voice prompted.

"Hi, Tifa," Light finally croaked.

"Light?" the other voice asked excitedly. "Light, please tell me that's you."

"Yeah, um, it's me..."

Silence. Light's unoccupied hand started playing with her backpack strap.

"How is...everyone?" the pink-haired woman finally asked, though the words sounded lame to her ears. She heard Tifa take a breath on the other end before she answered.

"Everyone is fine. Everyone is also missing you and wondering where you are."

The next words poured out of Light's mouth like beer on tap."I'm so sorry for running off like I did, Tifa, I'm so sorry I left you and the kids and—"

"Slow down, sweetie," said Tifa in her ever-patient, placating voice. The woman was the patron saint of forgiveness! "No wonder they call you Lightning," she chided gently. "I can't say I know exactly what you're going through, but I do know what it feels like to be lied to and hurt by someone you care for, and you don't have to explain yourself to me. It's really okay."

"But it's not okay," Light rejoined, at a more reasonable speed. "I just...I mean I _left_, without a word to you, and that's not okay."

"And you can make it up to me when you get back if you feel that strongly about it," Tifa offered, a hint of mischief in her voice. "You are coming back eventually, right?"

Light nodded even though she knew the gesture wouldn't be seen through the phone. "There's...somewhere I want to go, something I've got to do first, but yeah, I'm coming home after that."

"Okay, Light. Well, we'll be waiting for you. In the mean time, stay in touch, okay? And take care of yourself." Funny, that was what she usually said to Cloud when she talked to him on the phone.

"I will. Tell Marlene and Denzel I'll see them soon, and if Barret's still around tell him it was nice to meet him."

"I will," Tifa echoed. "Are there, er, any other messages you'd like me to pass on?"

"Um..." Light thought hard, however briefly, about that. Did she want Tifa to say anything to Vincent? "Eventually I am going to have a talk with – with _him –_ about our fight and everything. But, I don't think there's anything I can have you say to him now that would make things better between us. He's probably still really angry at me. I guess, er, you can tell him that I'll be back after I'm done visiting another l'Cie."

"You know that message doesn't make any sense, right?" Tifa asked, confused. Light nodded again, and again wondered why she did so, since she was talking on the phone.

"He'll know what it means," Light promised.

"Okay then. If you're sure. Light, really, be careful, and come back in one piece. We _all_ love you, okay?" Tears began welling in her eyes and it was all she could do to blink them back in time to give her response. The brightness of the sunset in her face did nothing to help the situation.

"I love you too, sis," she answered, though she was sure her voice cracked.

They hung up shortly after and Light stood on the pier, clenching her cell phone in one hand and her backpack strap in the other. Tears that she had failed to keep in check rolled down her face.

Tifa was crying on her end of the line, too. She set the phone gently on its cradle and tried to wipe her eyes without drawing too much attention, tried to pass the whole thing off as a reaction to the amount of hot sauce she had added to her bowl of macaroni and cheese.

Barret's vat of the deceptively simple-looking pasta dish had literally been a vat, a huge serving physically impossible to eat in one day, so Tifa had stored it, kept it in about a dozen easily reheated containers. Any time she wasn't serving it to Vincent to counteract his hangover, she was snacking on it herself. There was something about cheese that made Light's departure just a little bit easier to bear. Throw a little (or a lot) of hot sauce on it and she was almost prepared to add it to the permanent menu. That is, if she could get Barret to part with the recipe, which she was in no position to attempt. In the past Tifa had never hesitated to ask him for anything, nor had she thought twice about using some flirtatious charms to sway him to her line of thinking. But now that she knew her antics had had a genuine and lasting effect on him, she felt it was necessary to scale back a bit, or a lot. At least until she could sort out her feelings on the matter and give him an answer. And she had no intention of dealing with any of that until she had Light back and had gotten her and Vincent on the path to reconciliation.

Speaking of Vincent, the man was sitting a little ways down the bar. The poor man was so overcome with depression and anger – at himself, or at Light, it was almost impossible to tell for certain – that he had barely left the bar since the big fight. Indeed, the only time he had left had been to fall asleep on one of the upstairs beds. But he had woken up, surly and speaking with a voice as hollow as his broken heart, and had been at the bar or at a restaurant table ever since.

So there he sat, with a bowl of his own macaroni in front of him. He wasn't hungover right then; Tifa just thought he could use some more cheese in his diet. Not that he was eating the cheese. He was staring at her.

Of course, Vincent must have heard the phone conversation, or Tifa's end of it, anyway.

"Yes, that was her," Tifa admitted. Vincent slumped.

Why wouldn't Light call _him?_ Her fight was with him, and he didn't even care if she wanted to yell at him some more, he just wanted to have it out with her so they could go back to being able to stand in the same room and not kill each other. Even better, he just wanted a chance to explain himself. Vincent knew, as he stabbed spitefully at the curly noodles, that he was wrong to keep the truth from her even as she was wrong to overreact and walk out. Neither of them had handled the new development in their relationship with anything like aplomb, but they couldn't go back and change that. They could _only_ work it out and move forward.

Vincent sighed heavily. He wanted to turn back time, to go back to the way things were.

_You want to go back to a lie?_ his annoying conscience buzzed at him from some deep reach of his mind. No, of course he didn't want to lie to or deceive her. He didn't want to go back to that. What he wanted back was the feeling of being close to her. Just talking to her, in the Chocobo Sage's cabin, or watching her bond with Tifa and the kids.

Or after the play, when she was upset but had accepted and returned Vincent's attempt at a comforting hug. Her skin had smelled so sweet then, her hair against his cheek so soft, her arms around him firm and strong – ah, there was the conditioned soldier Tifa had hidden under makeup and satin skirts. And what had Vincent said to her that night?

"_I'm here for you when you need me. Period."_ That's what he said.

_That_ had been no lie. He would cross oceans to answer her call if she needed him. If Chaos had been a physical thing inside him, like a tumor, he would have cut it out himself to make her happy and win her trust again. In real life, he couldn't cut Chaos out; he could only try to manage and control it.

And in real life, Light would not call for him. Because no matter how he tried to rationalize himself and his actions, the fact would always remain that there was Chaos inside of him, a growing darkness so deep that not even Light could stand to counter it.

Vincent pulled himself out of his thoughts, for they were a dangerous and circuitous place that never seemed to go anywhere even when they went everywhere. "Where is she?" he asked Tifa. The woman shrugged.

"She didn't say exactly. Only that she was going to see about another l'Cie." Tifa tried to keep her voice casual and her hands busy with washing out cups as she talked, but she couldn't help looking over to see if Vincent's face would reveal some deep understanding that he could then fill Tifa in about.

Alas, he just looked really confused. And then he dropped his eyes back down into his macaroni and stabbed with his fork.

Then he recalled back to a conversation, one that seemed so many ages past, in which Light had asked him about _her._ Vincent had told her that _she_ was sleeping for what seemed eternity, encased in crystal. And what was Light's response?

Sounds like what happens to l'Cie who complete their Focus.

Light had to be going to see _her._

How did Light know where _she_ was buried? Nobody but SOLDIERs and Turks knew where _she_ was buried.

And if he went there after her, would she finally hear him out?

He couldn't answer either of those two questions, but he took it as a small sign of hope that Light had left a clue to her whereabouts in such a format that Vincent, alone out of everyone she had met since waking up, would understand. If she wanted to avoid him that desperately, there would be no sense in leaving him such a clue.

It was too late to follow her tonight – there would be no more ferries across the channel for the evening. But at dawn tomorrow, Vincent knew where he had to go.

"Follow the Light at the end of the tunnel," he mumbled to himself. Tifa didn't catch his words, but she did notice that he ate with a bit more enthusiasm afterward.

He had to keep his strength up, after all. He had a lot of ground to cover.

"Cloud, where have you been?" Tifa's voice cut through Vincent's musings like butter. He looked up from his macaroni in time to catch a glimpse of blond hair as Cloud pulled his helmet off and casually set it on some shelf below the bar.

"Church," the young man said, as if it was the most obvious thing. He grabbed a glass and poured himself a generous serving of some homemade moonshine, Barret's private recipe. Tifa instinctively retreated a few steps into the kitchen and returned with a small basket of rolls. These she set in front of Cloud without a word, but with enough of a meaningful look that he understood her purpose. He grudgingly took up a roll and bit into it before he ever touched the drink. Barret, if he had been in the room, would have laughed and told Spiky to go ahead and "git his shine on," but, as the rowdy affectionate giant was nowhere in sight to offer such encouragement, Cloud was obliged to git his carbs on first.

Marlene came downstairs around the same time Cloud was munching on his roll. She hopped up to a seat at the bar beside Vincent, roughly across from Cloud's basket.

"That's a stronger drink than usual for you," Marlene wrinkled her nose at the smell. "Something wrong, Cloud?"

Blond spikes bounced as he shook his head. "No. I had a long day is all." He took a sip. "Did you guys ever locate Commander Fisticuffs?"

Tifa's eyebrows raised in disbelief at that nickname. "She called just a few minutes ago. Why does it matter to you?"

Cloud just shrugged, his eyes firmly planted on his glass. "You like her and you were worried; I just thought I'd check in. That's all. So if she called and you're not all panicking then I guess she's okay?"

"She's fine, and she'll be back soon," Tifa reported. Here she took a moment to offer a reassuring smile to Marlene, who looked up hopefully at the news that Auntie Light was expected to come home. "Why do you care, Cloud? You never liked her."

Cloud finally looked Tifa in the eyes and scoffed. "How many times..." he mumbled, then, louder, "Yeah, sure, I never liked her, but that doesn't mean I want her to get mugged on the way to Costa del Sol or starve in the wilderness somewhere. If all of my friends' happiness depends on her being alive and well, then yeah, I hope she's alive and well, wherever she is."

Silence was the only thing that answered Cloud's unexpected speech. All three of them: Tifa, Marlene, and Vincent, were staring Cloud down.

"Costa...del Sol?" Tifa asked after a moment.

Cloud blanched. That was enough for his friends, who knew him well enough to notice his tells.

"Cloud," Tifa's voice sounded dangerously low. "Costa del Sol?" The object of her scrutiny looked away, but all he found in either direction was Vincent and Marlene's eyes boring into him.

He sighed and ruffled his hands through spiky hair. Well, that was a short game. At least he could reasonably assume that he had given himself away and that Light had honored his request not to mention anything.

"Yeah, that's where she went today." Cloud lifted his glass, but Tifa's fingers over the cup's mouth prevented him from taking another sip.

Vincent remained silent. He had already come to his conclusions about Light's ultimate destination, but he was not aware of her intended path. He held his tongue but sharpened his gaze, daring Cloud to elaborate. Tifa, with her hand still on Cloud's glass of moonshine, spoke next.

"And, when did _you_ talk to her? _Why_ did you talk to her?"

"Hey, she came to me!" Cloud protested before either Tifa or Vincent could jump down his throat again. At his sudden admission, both of them fell silent and gaped. "She came to see me at the church. I don't know what was going through her head, I just gave her some directions. That's it."

"So you sent her to a resort?" Marlene asked innocently. The three adults jumped as they realized the little girl was still there. Cloud shook his head.

"The resort is just...on the way," he answered. He wasn't sure how much of Light's purpose he should reveal. Did it matter if he told them where she was going? She would be across the continent by now, if she was smart and made good time, so they couldn't stop her. Did he care if they tried to stop her or not? Not really, but if it would calm her down and make her easier to deal with when she got back, she might as well complete her quest without interruption or sabotage. So he shut his mouth and stopped talking before he could say anything about a certain cave outside Nibelheim. Tifa had removed her hand from his glass and he took the opportunity to bury himself in his drink.

Vincent stood up. There was an unsettling look in his eyes and in the set of his jaw. Tifa raised her eyebrows at him.

"What's with you?" she asked. Vincent's eyes sharpened as he turned his gaze in her direction.

"I'm going to find her," he said simply. The two adults and one child looked at him and gaped.

"Do you really think that's such a good idea?" asked Cloud, though his voice wavered as though he was unsure he had a right to be speaking.

"It doesn't matter if it's a good idea. It's the right idea. I've got some things I need to talk to her about, and I'm not waiting until she decides to come back from the other side of the world." With that, Vincent turned, all hint of his previous despair vanished, and he practically strutted out the door, bound for his own apartment to prepare for his journey.

Cloud, Tifa, and Marlene all stood or sat in their respective places around the bar, still staring open-mouthed at the place where Vincent had been standing.

"He _really_ likes her, doesn't he?" Marlene said after a full minute of silence. She looked to Tifa for her answer. Tifa just nodded and turned back to washing glasses. She hoped Vincent had a better plan than simply running Light down, but even if he did, things would get ugly before they got pretty again. All any of them had left to do was wait for the storm to pass.


	11. Chapter 11: Because You Were Waiting

One of Costa del Sol's many charms was the local Choco-Depot and stables, the largest on the continent, or so boasted the sign on the outer gate. Light had a little money saved up from from working in the bar – Tifa _insisted_ on paying her such a wage, after going on about the wonderful feeling of personal accomplishment and the usefulness of having some emergency gil stashed away – and while the ferry ticket had taken out a sizable chunk of her savings, she yet retained enough to cover renting a chocobo for the next stage of her journey.

So the morning after her tearful conversation with Tifa, she strolled through the stables and pens, breathing in that distinct and pungent chocobo smell, a thick odor not unlike the oil in a human scalp, though much more sickly sweet than any actual human Light ever smelled. In addition to the actual chocobos, Light's senses were assailed by the smell of the leather tack and saddles and the sweet, grassy aroma of freshly harvested greens. All around her, in every pen, large birds warked or trilled as she passed. Light couldn't help but smile as she remembered the pastures beside the Chocobo Sage's cabin. She shook her head and tried to banish the memory to make room for the sound of the stable groom who walked beside her.

The groom was a small, very thin man with pointed features who had introduced himself as Benty – and Light wasn't quite certain if that was a first name or a last name – and then immediately launched into his sales pitch about the joys of traveling by chocobo. Light tried to hurry this part of the speech along so she could get to choosing an actual bird. Apparently mentioning to Benty several times that she was in a rush was not enough to override his programmed objective of telling her everything he could possibly think to say about traveling on birdback.

"Chocobos are great," she summed up for him with a rolling motion of her hand that meant he should hurry up. "Are all these available for rent?"

"Oh why yes, certainly, Miss," Benty beamed. He threw his arm out in a broad gesture. "Yes ma'am, every one here has passed inspection and declared ready to ride. Are you looking to cross any lakes or channels on your trip then? We've got a lovely blue here, very calm, perfect for a lady like you." As he spoke, Benty tried to lead Light over to the pen that held the bird he described. She caught a glimpse and had to admit that bird was lovely, but according to her map she wasn't going to find much use for a blue.

"Actually, buddy—"

"Benty," the small groom corrected with a toothy smile.

"Where I'm going is pretty rough, I could use something better suited to mountains," Light finished without acknowledging his interruption. Benty's eyes lit up.

"A green is just what you need!" he exclaimed, and turned Light toward a different pen. "Now here we have Mako, a simply beautiful hen, and quite able to handle even the toughest trails around these parts."

Mako turned her head at the sound of her own name and trilled softly. She was at least as beautiful as the blue, Light had to admit, strong and muscular with well groomed feathers. But then something yellow at the corner of her eye drew her attention. Even though Benty was in the middle of his Mako-specific sales pitch, Light turned away and walked toward the the yellow.

He was large even by rooster standards, his feathers bright and practically gleaming in the sun. Light could swear that some of those feathers glittered. His eyes were huge and round and dark, and he looked down at Light with that peculiar intelligence chocobos seemed to possess on special occasions even though they were so bird-brained most of the time.

"Ah," Benty appeared at Light's side and couldn't hide the distaste in his voice. "This one. This was an attempt by a very prominent local breeder to produce a legendary gold. As you can clearly see, his attempt failed miserably. Nuggets can handle more than your average yellow, of course, but he's no gold." Benty's voice sounded pitifully sad, though it was unclear if he was more sad for Nuggets's sake or the breeder's.

"His name is Nuggets?" Light asked before she could stop herself.

"As in, that's what he would have become if the breeder hadn't donated him to us," Benty agreed. "We're rather ashamed of him, and don't usually let him out of the stable, but the vet said he needed the air and exercise."

Light turned away from the groom and back to the bird. Nuggets was still staring at her. A low rolling vibration began in the bird's throat, almost like a purr. It took her several moments to realize that he was attempting to make the same trill she'd heard from the hens. Light reached her hand into his pen.

The rooster looked at her hand, turned his head this way and that, in almost the same manner he might have regarded a bug he was considering snapping up and eating, but then Nuggets lowered his head and nuzzled her.

"Amazing, he actually likes you," Benty beamed.

"Maybe because I'm the only person who doesn't want to turn him into a party plate," Light muttered acidly, but low enough so Benty wouldn't hear. "You don't seem to like having him around," she noted at normal volume.

Benty was nodding vigorously. Combined with his slightly overlarge pompadour hairstyle, the effect was that of a dashboard bobblehead. "He eats so much and no one ever wants to rent him. He's too big and scary for children, and most people think yellows are boring, even if this one can do much more than a normal yellow. Those with a breeder's eye can tell he's a failed gold and that only makes it worse."

"Why don't you let me buy him?" Light offered. "He sounds like a real money pit for you guys anyway, and that can't look good on your books." She secretly had almost no idea what she was talking about, but she knew from a television show that money pits on the books were a bad thing.

Benty actually did know what she was talking about, being a member of a business that had to worry about such things. He wrung his hands and licked his lips.

"I can't authorize a sale myself," he finally said. "But my supervisor could help you with that." And Benty ran off to collect his supervisor. Light stayed beside Nuggets's pen and watched him watching her.

"Interesting that you should be called Nuggets," Light mused aloud to him. "You know I once had a dream about a chocobo named Nuggets. Looked a lot like you, too. Who would have thought you were real?"

In response, the bird started up his low purr-like trill again.

Bringing up that dream forced Light to remember certain other parts of it. Like the fact that Vincent was the rider of that dream-Nuggets. She could see him clearly in her mind's eye: the way he always stood with his shoulders back and his head tilted down slightly, like an animal constantly on the lookout for some shadow monster, always tensed to fight. The downward tilt meant that most times she met his eyes had been through a screen of lashes, and because such looks were sidelong, Light's strongest visual memories of him were in profile. That's what she saw now, almost as if he stood next to her outside of Nuggets's pen: tall, lanky Vincent, viewed from the side, of course, his hair ruffled by the breeze coming in off the sea, and his nose wrinkled in distaste at the strong smell of salt and chocobo. Nuggets warked, Light blinked, and Vincent was gone, vanished in half a second. A sad, even wistful sigh escaped her; she hated to admit missing him, but there it was: she was alone, _again_, and she missed him.

Benty returned with his supervisor, a portly man in a suit that looked awfully uncomfortable considering the heat and humidity of a tropical beach resort. The supervisor had a thick mustache, but other than this and his eyebrows, his face and head were devoid of hair, like a big, bald, mustachioed baby.

Light's meeting with this man went swiftly, so swiftly that she did not even bother to commit his name to memory. He was eager to sell the bird that had eaten his greens and made him no money in return, and because Nuggets was a donation in the first place, there was no initial purchase investment that he had to make up, and he was willing to offer Light a tempting bargain. For a measly five hundred gil, Light walked out of the Choco-Depot rental stables with her very own bought-and-paid-for chocobo. Five hundred gil naturally wouldn't cover the cost of a fancy leather saddle for him, but the supervisor had allowed himself to part with one of the lesser cloth saddles – little more than a blanket with a few straps and buckles to hold it in place – and a nylon bridle and lead rope. Even so, Light beamed with unexpected pride as she led Nuggets from his Choco-Depot prison. Nuggets himself was perfectly happy to leave, if his warks and trills were any indication.

The two of them looked over the grassy plains that stretched between Costa del Sol and their first mountain range. Nuggets stretched his wings, threw his head back and emitted a loud, crowing "kweh!" to the sky. Light laughed aloud, a deep laugh straight from the belly. What she was laughing at, she had no idea. She didn't even know why she was so eager to get to Lucrecia's cave in the first place, but as she climbed onto Nuggets's back and settled herself in the part vaguely correlated to the space between human shoulder-blades, she decided it didn't matter exactly what curiosity or need drove her there; it was far more important to have the journey. She craved the feeling of wind in her hair, the pounding of Nuggets's feet as he shifted his weight on the run, drowning out her every fear and insecurity. She set her chocobo at a brisk trot, to which Nuggets readily complied. He was so overjoyed at being out of a pen that he would have run faster, would have gone at any speed at all, but Light was wary of riding him too hard and wearing him out; she got the feeling Benty wasn't so great at keeping him physically fit. Better to build him up to the sprints and bounds he desired.

Even so, she occasionally let them veer from their course just enough to approach a large boulder or some other debris, just to give Nuggets the challenge and thrill of leaping over such obstacles. A triumphant "kweh!" accompanied every successful landing.

Over on the eastern continent, Vincent was much less scrupulous about speed and much more urgently focused on reaching _her_ cave and resting place. He had, er, _borrowed_ a certain bike from a certain spiky blond. He rationalized it like so: months earlier, Cloud had built himself a new bike, a smaller, speedier one that had much better gas mileage and was perfect for the weaving around the city he needed to do to collect Tifa's orders for the bar and perform other local deliveries. His use for Fenrir had dwindled to the point that he had not ridden the poor thing in at least a month and a half.

So Vincent stopped by the bar early in the morning, greeted Tifa curtly and ignored her questions as he slipped into Cloud's office to swipe the bike's key, then made his way into the alley, threw the tarp aside, and took the neglected bike. Tifa protested all the while, but her attempts were feeble. She knew he was going to take the bike to hunt down Light, and presumably to bring her home. Sure, she disapproved of grand theft auto, but she also disapproved of Light's absence, and if Fenrir had been her own bike, she would have simply offered it to him when he first announced his intentions of following Light to wherever he thought she was going. As it was, Fenrir was not her own bike, and years of society-programmed decorum demanded that she express some amount of censure even if she was secretly smiling.

As he started through Edge's streets en route to the highway, he considered his path and his pace. Even pushing the bike to the max, Vincent wouldn't reach the coast until the early afternoon. The ponderous ferry, the only reasonably safe way without an airship for a man and his motorcycle to cross the channel on the northern half of the coast, would get him to Costa del Sol at perhaps four if he arrived in time to catch the one o'clock. If he refueled and kept riding with no stops, he could make it all the way to the cave sometime during the night. Night travel on such a bulky bike would be dangerous, and he considered camping once the sun went down and resuming his chase in the morning. He had no way of knowing Light's own pace, and if she was on foot he would definitely overtake her.

Did he want to overtake her? She had to be going to that cave for a reason, and as much as he wanted to talk to her, he also wanted her to be mentally prepared to talk to him back. If going to _her_ cave was what she needed to prepare, then he should back off and let her get there first. Vincent resolved to take a break at Costa del Sol, maybe take some lunch, ask around about a pink-haired woman. If he could figure out her mode of travel, he would know how much time to allow her to reach the cave before he raced after her.

First things first: get to the coast. Vincent felt the bike shift gears automatically as he hit the highway and picked up speed.

He needn't have worried about running Light down. She and Nuggets were practically riding the wind, moving over the open ground so swiftly that she wondered if the bird's feet even touched the earth. Nuggets had finally won their battle of wills, or rather, Light had not the heart to keep him trotting when he clearly wanted to run. But as his beak was still closed and his neck wasn't stretched out, and his wings were down, close into his body, Light told herself not to worry: it was obvious he wasn't about to overheat.

She couldn't believe that Benty and his supervisor had been so eager to sell such a beautiful animal. Sure, he wasn't a coveted shiny gold, but his performance was top-rate for a yellow, and easily on par with those blacks, Jenny and Steff, that the Chocobo Sage had lent her and Vincent those weeks ago. Light hoped those two birds had been returned properly; they were good animals, and they deserved to get back safely to someone who loved them as much as the old Sage did.

With Nuggets running at his top speed, Light arrived at the edge of Cloud's circle on her map at around the same time Vincent arrived at the resort in Costa del Sol. Depending on where the actual cave entrance was, she still had either minutes or hours of wandering the trails yet ahead of her, and she was gripped by a peculiar ambivalence: relief settled in her stomach at knowing how close she had come to the last known l'Cie, and yet a curious tension built in her shoulders as she realized her anxiety about what she would find when she got there. She didn't know what to expect, and not having even an expectation threw her off balance.

While she searched for the cave entrance, Vincent searched for clues about her. A dock worker for the ferry recalled a pink-haired woman on the pier the night before, though he couldn't say where she might have gone from there. A cafe manager remembered a woman of Vincent's description purchasing a small cup of coffee. An old man in the cafe chimed in that he had seen that young lady walking through the town, but of course he didn't know where she had gone or what she was doing. It wasn't until Vincent stopped by the Choco-Depot that he struck gold. A tiny, scrawny groom greeted him at the gate, a man whose eyes lit up with recognition when Vincent asked about a slender woman with pink hair.

"Oh yes, she came in here this morning, a fine lady!" Benty exclaimed. He was more than willing to give her such a favorable description since she had taken Nuggets off his hands and off his books. "Sold her a lovely bird, a lovely bird for a lovely customer." No need to mention her purchase was a failed gold.

"Alright, but can you tell me where she went after she bought the bird?" Vincent asked, somewhat impatiently. He already knew Light was a fine and lovely lady, and now she was one who had just gotten her hands on a chocobo. Suddenly he had less time to waste than before.

"Oh, she immediately turned herself toward the mouth of our little peninsula – what's that called? – the isthmus – she turned right for the isthmus and rushed right off," Benty said with a perky little spring in his feet. "Are you a friend of hers? If you're looking to catch up with her, I'd be happy to let you a chocobo!"

Vincent's answering look must have been colder than he intended, because Benty shrank back a few steps. "A concerned friend, but I'm not interested in catching up to her just yet." It was slightly more polite than telling the groom to his face that he had no interest in renting one of his precious birds.

"Well, um," Benty answered with a hard swallow and a nervous chuckle. "When you are, please don't hesitate to contact us."

Suddenly another nearby groom, a wiry-muscled teenage girl with a lot of freckles from sun exposure, spoke up. "If you are planning to catch her at all, sir, you might want to get on it sooner rather than later."

"Why is that?" Vincent turned his steely gaze on the young girl. She didn't back down from his stare.

"There were some people, men I think, watching her when she came in. I don't know who they were, but they were wearing strange clothes and I don't think they were with her."

Vincent's eyebrows shot up and he motioned for the girl to elaborate.

"Well, they had these long jackets, which is weird for the beach, you know? And under their jackets it looked like they had uniforms on. I don't know what kind, just, they were dark, kind of black and grey. They watched her come in to our yards, and they watched her leave, and I think they started tailing her about an hour after she headed out."

It wasn't enough information to be sure those men were of the same faction that had attacked Edge, but the description was similar enough that it had the hairs on Vincent's arm standing with anxious dread. He thanked the girl and Benty and turned away, making his way back to the bike with as much haste as he could muster without outright running and drawing too much attention.

Feelings and mental preparation be damned, Light's physical safety came first, and if strange men were following her, if they so much as put one hand on her, Vincent would shank the flesh from their bones and he wouldn't need Chaos's help to do it. A low growl rumbled in his chest and throat, the sound disguised and hidden by the growling of Fenrir below him. Rarely in his life had Vincent – not Chaos, but Vincent the man himself – felt so savage, so thirsty for vengeance and the blood of an enemy, and it startled him, especially when he remembered that those men hadn't even shown themselves as enemies yet. But he wasn't willing to take chances. He had taken a chance with a woman he loved once, and the result had been utter disaster. He was not about to risk Light the way he had risked _her_.

_Her_. Wasn't it past time he stopped running from saying, from _thinking_ her very name?

"Lucrecia," he murmured. "Lucrecia, I let you down. I learned my lesson. I lost you once; I will not lose her now." Vincent leaned down lower on the bike and forced it to go faster, recklessly fast. But he didn't care about that. All he cared about was reaching Light before anyone else. It had been such a long time since he had felt anything so strongly, he didn't quite know what to do with himself or how to deal with it.

Vincent growled again. Feelings and mental preparation be damned twice, he would deal with his emotions later. Light came first; whether he would kill those strange men on the road or whether he would stand by her side in a final showdown against them, either way he would ensure her safety first, and _then_ he would think about and reconcile himself to the emotions that drove him to protect her in the first place.

It was sunset when Light finally found the cave entrance. After several other dead end caves, she and Nuggets finally stepped out from the orange glow of the waning daylight and into a cool underground chamber lit in greens and blues by bioluminescent fungi. The fungi alone told her she was somewhere different and special compared to her other exploration attempts. But no amount of glowing mushrooms could prepare her for what she found in a secondary chamber just off the first.

In the center of the cave there stood a faintly glowing crystal. It cast a blue glow and a mild heat over the entire room. Here the mushrooms and lichens grew thick in the comfortably warm humidity provided by the crystal, but what held Light captive more than anything else was the woman, sleeping so peacefully, inside that translucent rock.

There she was. Lucrecia. The last l'Cie. Her face was so tranquil, her hands delicately folded over themselves like the petals of a white lily. Her long hair seemed to flare and surround her body like a frame around a photograph, and like a photo, she hung there in perfect stasis, preserved for what was effectively an eternity.

_Not an eternity_, Light thought to herself. _After all, I woke up._

Her stomach jolted as she recalled back to that first day. The shock of the crystal splitting around her, the sudden rush of air around her body and into her lungs, the dryness in her eyes when she opened them for the first time in forever and felt that air. The moment her eyes rested on the face of the man who had woken her, the surprise in his eyes as she leapt from her throne, wrenching her joints in the process and slammed him against the stalactite, demanded to know where her sister was...until the real world came crashing back around her like the surge of a wave and she remembered Serah's fate. And then the man, whom she had just assaulted, instead of attacking back, or leaving her, or taking advantage, had placed a coat around her shoulders exposed to the ice. Light might never have thought to do that. Had their positions been reversed, she might have gotten mad and stabbed Vincent with her gunblade before he ever had a chance to back himself off.

A scoffing laugh escaped Light's lips at that realization, and then she lowered her eyes away from Lucrecia in shame. Hadn't she more or less done that very thing when she snapped at him about Chaos? He was angry, but he had backed down and tried to explain rationally, to apologize and to talk things out like civilized adults, and what had she done? She got mad, hit him below the belt with her monster comments, and stormed out.

She wished she could go back to that night, only a few nights ago and yet it felt like a lifetime. She wanted to go back and take back her brutal words. Light looked back up at Lucrecia. The crystallized woman did nothing, said nothing, but her image gave Light a much needed shot of hope. Lucrecia had lived her life, completed her Focus and become a crystal, destined to sleep, yes, but also destined to rise again when the time was right. She would have her second chance. As for Light, she was already in her second chance, and she wasn't going to waste it. It was high time she seized it by the throat, threw it to the ground and rewrote any parts of her future that didn't sit right with her. Her hand rose and her fingers pressed over her sternum, where her l'Cie brand had been. Now there was nothing there but a barely visible whitish scar, but she used to feel buzzing tingles in that spot whenever she was presented with major world-altering powers, Etro and Chaos being the most notable. Since waking up she hadn't felt the slightest twitch, not even when she had run Chaos down with her eidolon. Maybe she had been given a truly fresh start, free of all of those burdens.

Light was so absorbed in her new lease on life that she didn't hear or notice the sound of a motorcycle outside the cave entrance. She did, however, notice when the sound of boots echoed from the stone chamber beside her own. Nuggets also tilted his head in the direction of the cave mouth, where the sound originated. Light didn't know what she was expecting when the owner of the boots appeared, but she wasn't entirely prepared for that person to be Vincent.

Nuggets trilled at the sight of the man, pleased with the shiny belt buckles and armor pieces as only a bird can be. Vincent's eyes darted in alarm to the giant bird at Light's side, but it was only a momentary distraction and his eyes returned to the woman standing bathed in the blue light thrown by the crystal.

"You really did buy a chocobo," he said, having forgotten to first offer a normal greeting. There was no judgment in the gravel of his voice, just surprise.

"Hello to you, too," was Light's answer. "I can't say I expected you to follow me here, and certainly not this quickly."

Vincent took a step further into the cave. "You told me where you were going. You told me in a way that no one else would understand. How could I not follow you?" It wasn't really a question that demanded an answer, so he didn't wait for one, nor did she appear to be forthcoming with one. "We should probably get out of here. A girl at the chocobo farm said she saw some strange men follow you out of town."

Light's head tilted in confusion. "Strange men? I didn't see any."

"Apparently they were watching you at the depot, and took off after your trail a little while after you'd gone, probably to avoid suspicion," Vincent explained. Light's head stayed in its tilted position and her eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in confused suspicion.

"How do you know all that?" she asked.

"The only ferry puts in at Costa del Sol. And, um, you stand out. I put it together and asked around about you," Vincent answered. His eyes swept down to the floor before returning to Light's face. He didn't need to mention Cloud's involvement; there was no purpose in getting the one mad at the other for no good reason.

They didn't get a chance to continue bantering back and forth, for at that moment they heard the sound of other boots in the cave.

"...when she didn't come out...had to be the right one," said a muffled voice whose echoes were too soft to hear every inflection.

Vincent wanted to swear, but he knew too well the echoes of the cave system, so instead he made a low hiss and retreated inward from the entrance to Lucrecia's cavern until he stood beside Light. "Gunblade," he whispered to her. Light nodded and reached back to draw the weapon slung against the back of her thighs. When she looked back to Vincent, she saw that he held his own heavy pistol, Cerberus, at the ready.

"...that other guy...reinforcements?"

"Still outnumbered."

Light and Vincent took steadying breaths almost in perfect unison. And then the 'strange dark men' were upon them. They had shed their heavy urban camouflage coats and now appeared in the very same uniforms of the men who had attacked Edge. The vertical blue stripes practically glowed in the light of Lucrecia's crystal.

One of the men looked over their heads, to that same crystal. A wicked grin spread over his features. The other two had rifles raised and ready.

"Ah, so here she is at last. I must thank you, madam, for bringing us right to the leading authority on the powers of Chaos. We've been looking for her for a long time." Light shot a look over to Vincent. Lucrecia was the leading authority on Chaos? How much more beside themselves would these imbeciles be if they knew that Chaos in the flesh stood before them?

"Oh great, you found her," Light began in a sarcastic snarl as she turned her eyes back to them, "I'm sure she'll be very cooperative with your interrogations."

"When we break her out of that crystal and harvest the data from her brain directly, she'll be very cooperative indeed," the lead man replied.

Neither Light nor Vincent took kindly to that response. At once, their hackles were raised, their heads low, their weapons up. Nuggets sensed the change and lowered his head too. His powerful feet scratched at the dirt and rocks below.

"I had hoped we wouldn't have to kill a pretty thing like you," the lead man leered, "but if you're going to be that way..." He took up his walkie talkie and ordered reinforcements with a few words. Then his men opened fire.

Light leaped up, Vincent dodged to the side, and Nuggets was simply a raging ball of feathers and claws and beak. He also seemed to have much thicker skin than Light had supposed, because unless her eyes were cheating her, the bird took several bullets and wasn't affected by any of them. Then Nuggets backed off and Light offered her return fire, a single well-placed round to the knee of the man on the right. Her careful aim meant she was slow to fire, but since she didn't have a particular wealth of ammunition on her person, she had no choice but to pick her shots. Her bullets were low enough caliber that a shot to the head might not be fatal through the man's helmet, and she couldn't know if he was wearing armor below his uniform coat, so his core was off-limits until she knew more about this faction's defenses. But legs were rarely armored properly, and even when they were, joints provided structural weaknesses that she could exploit to her heart's content.

Vincent took a bullet during that initial fire, but it was barely a graze on the side of his belly; enough to break clothing and skin, but not enough to damage an organ, and thankfully too low to have hit and shattered a rib. He hit the cave floor, rolled, and sent his answering shot. The bullet moved up and caught the man under the chin in the exposed area between helmet and clothing. That man was dead before he hit the ground. As she came down from her heroic leap, Light somersaulted and sliced open the rightmost man with her blade from the navel to the base of his throat. His clothes and flesh cut easily, like a baked potato.

So these guys weren't wearing proper armor, she noted.

Reinforcements arrived before either of them had time to take a breath, and these ones were armed with sub-machine guns. Light rolled fast to cover, but Vincent was less advantageously placed and the troops concentrated their fire on him. As he ran to his own cover, several bullets caught him in the ribs.

Light could see Vincent and his injuries clearly from where she crouched. She could see him spasming in his attempt to resist going into shock. That he was able to resist at all was astonishing.

"Vincent!" she called his name, hoping the sound of it would keep him grounded. He looked up at her, breathing heavily, each inhalation sharper than the one before it. While Nuggets provided a distraction – a lethal distraction for one of the mysterious soldiers – Light darted from her cover to join up with Vincent. She examined his chest.

"They've got us...like fish...in a barrel," Vincent gasped. One of his bullet holes was high; surely it had hit him square in the lung.

"If ever there was a time when we might actually need Chaos..." Light began, but she trailed off as Vincent shook his head.

"No. I can...control it...I can...not in front of them...they can't know...it's me."

"Vincent stay with me," Light warned, suddenly alarmed. "No collapsing until we've killed every last one of those sons of bitches. Are you with me?"

Vincent actually managed a smile. "Always with you, Commander Fisticuffs."

What?

Light didn't have time to work out that nickname, so she put it aside and nodded. She rose from cover long enough to shoot one of the enemies three times in the chest. Her grouping was tight and she knew that even if he didn't die right away, he wouldn't survive the blood buildup in his lungs. That man staggered away and two or three more took his place, but between the shadows and Light's duck behind the cover rock, she didn't get an exact count.

Vincent's turn. He stood up and shot one of the newcomers. His aim wasn't as true through the blinding pain in his lungs, but he still managed to catch the man in the stomach. That was another wound that would be a slow-ish killer, and an excruciating one at that.

Nuggets began pecking at one man in particular, and chased him around the cavern in a circuit until he arrived back at the cover rock. He was bleeding pretty badly from beak-stabs, but he tried to get in one last shot at Vincent. Light had none of that. She stood up and one of her long legs passed over Vincent's hunched shoulders as she leaned far forward and stabbed out with her gunblade. That leg was perfectly placed for her design of protecting Vincent, for in the moment of her fatal stab, the man jerked back on his trigger and released a bullet that sped directly into Light's thigh. She would have cried out with the pain, but she bit down on her own lip and the noise she finally emitted came across more as a grunt or perhaps a groan. It was only the support of the large cover rock that stopped her from dropping her weight onto Vincent's back before she could get a chance to move back into position and apply pressure to her leg.

She clamped her hand down on her wound and tried to remember through the dizzying sear all the way up and down her femur where she had put her bandages, or something that might serve as a bandage. Or maybe a tourniquet. Her backpack was behind her original cover rock, discarded there when she decided it was more important to have full mobility. Some mobility she had now.

Vincent saw red in more ways than one when he looked down at Light's injury. Every gush of blood in time with her beating heart sent another wave of rage into his mind. He had to hold on, couldn't let Chaos come through. If these men were willing to kill to get Lucrecia, imagine what they would do to get Chaos itself. Vincent couldn't play that trump card, and even if he could, he dared not do anything that showed Light he was in less than full control of his darkness. But even such rational thoughts could not quiet his rage as he looked at Light and her escaping lifeblood running into the rocks and dirt below.

No more Mr. Nice Valentine.

Ignoring every jab and pain in his chest and lungs, Vincent stood and shot the man nearest him in the head. He shot the man after that in the head, and the man after that, and with every shot he moved further out of cover and closer to the enemy. When he got to point-blank range, he lowered his gun and simply stabbed the next man in line with his clawed gauntlet.

The man behind the stab victim had just enough time to ready his backup weapon, a bayonet, before Vincent closed in on him. That man drove the bayonet deep into Vincent's left shoulder and must have torn through half the joint, but Vincent didn't so much as wince. From the hip, he shot Cerberus again, catching the man in the groin, and then, even though he was still impaled on that wicked bayonet, Vincent clamped his left hand around his victim's neck and squeezed until he heard the snap of vertebrae.

The lead man was the only one left. Light struggled to a standing position behind her cover and shot him. She was aiming for his core but misjudged and hit his arm instead. Unfortunately it wasn't even his dominant arm. The leader raised his pistol and shot the easy target, Vincent, twice in the chest. Vincent managed to lift Cerberus high enough to return the shot to the leader, catching him in the face, and then he succumbed to his many wounds and collapsed.

"Vincent!" Light screamed as she watched him tremble and crumple to the ground. Her leg bled freely as ever, but she ignored the pain and the dizziness and clawed her way out of cover, across the mossy rocks to where he lay, face down and still. She wasn't even paying attention to whether or not any more reinforcements would follow into the cave. Luckily, none did, and the one man standing outside who might have been interested was quickly chased off by a rampaging Nuggets.

Light rolled Vincent over and pushed his hair back with her mud-streaked, blood-streaked hand. His wounds were extensive: oozing bullet holes peppered his body, concentrated mostly on his left side, and his left arm was held on at the shoulder by a few measly tendons and a bayonet. Light quickly slid the bayonet from his joint but almost regretted doing so when his arm nearly broke free entirely. Choking back the sobs that began rising in her throat, Light lowered her head down to his chest. She felt his heart beating fast, felt the shallow, irregular rise of his chest.

"Still breathing," she gasped as she cradled his head in her arm and curled herself into him. The sobs came in rolling waves now, tears streaked down her face and her entire body shook. Her arms snaked tighter around Vincent's head and chest.

"Damn it, Valentine, don't you die on me. Don't you dare die on me..." she repeated helplessly into his torso. She remembered something in her backpack. "Wait here," she ordered him. "Don't move. Please don't die..."

Light set him down as gently as she could and stumbled, crawled, limped to her bag where she left it behind that boulder. She wrenched open the side zipper pocket.

There it was: the tiny white feather, the Phoenix Down. She snatched at it, held it between her teeth as she fumbled for a potion, and then forced her way back over those slick bloodied rocks to where he lay, just barely alive.

"This better work," she snarled. Anger was the only thing she could use to combat the growing emptiness inside her. Anger kept her hands steady, held her sobs in check as she forced the tiny little down feather into the potion bottle and shook it. Light lifted Vincent's unconscious head and pressed his lips open between her fingers.

She poured the entire potion down his throat, Down and all. The bottle, now empty, flew from Light's impatient hand across the cave, smashed against the wall and shattered in a burst of sparkles. Light didn't watch the shattering, but the sound of it assuaged her anger as she held his head in her lap.

The tears began running afresh. "Vincent, please," she pleaded. "I'm—I'm so sorry, I should never have left like that, please just, pull through this. You need to fight. I...need you to fight." The anger rose again like a tide. "Damn it, Vincent, since when do you let rabble like this take you down? If you think I am going to let you walk out on me now after _everything _we've been though_..._ No, you idiot jerk, you make it through, you _fight!_ And you come back to me, do you hear me?..." her voice broke, reduced to little more than a whisper as she hung her head barely inches from his own. "You're so strong, Vincent, one of the strongest people I know. I know why you didn't tell me about Chaos, I do, and I understand. I would have done the same in your place, and...I _should _have listened to you when you tried to explain. I know that now.

"You're not—not allowed to go still thinking I hate you for that. Because I don't hate you, not at all. Even when I was too angry to bear it and even when I wanted to kill Chaos, I never, _never_ hated you, Vincent, the man inside. You own the power of Chaos now, but you can choose to use it for good, and I couldn't see that before. And you _would _choose to use it for good, I know that, because I know _you_. Even I would use that power for good, and you're a much better person than I am." Here she paused in her ranting to make room for a wave of racking sobs, but when those had subsided somewhat she continued:

"I was supposed to sleep forever to pay for my sins, but you—you woke me up. You showed me how to live again. You pulled me from the depths of despair and opened my eyes to this new world of yours. I think I was meant to sleep there, for who knows how many years, hoping, praying, _waiting_, for the day when you would come for me. Not anyone, but you, just you. So you see? You can't die. Not yet. Not like this. I c—I can't do this again, I can't do any of this unless I know you've got my back..."

Light trailed off. She closed her eyes. The sobs had died away into the occasional hiccup, but the tears kept going.

If Light had been ranting less and paying any attention at all to her surroundings, she might have noted that Vincent's left arm was now fully attached at his shoulder. She might have seen that some other, smaller slash wounds scabbed over and the bullet holes expelled their bullets. She might have noticed the shift in his breathing as he grasped onto a tendril of consciousness that fluttered down to him in the dark place where he had been trapped within himself.

"Nngh," came the hoarse groan. Light lifted her head and looked at him. _Please tell me I didn't imagine that_, she thought to herself desperately. But then Vincent groaned again, and his eyes flickered open. He had some trouble putting his world into focus, but at last he made out the image of Light's face above his own.

"L-light?" he croaked. A hand reached up toward her; she held very still as he slid his fingertips against her cheek. "Light, I– am I dreaming? Or dead?"

Light shook her head. It took her a moment to gather her words and push them past the hard lump in her throat. "No dream, and you're not dead." Vincent seemed to realize where he was and he sat up slowly, hesitantly, grunting his discomfort all the while. He turned to face her properly, and his hand returned to her cheek. That she allowed as much was almost enough to convince him he really was dreaming after all. But Light felt much too real for that. The blood and dirt in her clothing were too real, and the wound in her leg...

"We need to take care of that," Vincent said sternly as he shot a pointed look at the hole in her thigh. She glanced down at it, then back up, and all the while said nothing. The man shook his head. "Let's see if I have a... Here, drink this," and he tossed her a small potion from out of his side pocket. Still silent, Light pulled out the cork and drank the foul-tasting potion. She wanted to gag at the flavor, but the warmth in her leg told her its healing powers were hard at work. She felt her flesh knit back together, felt it expel the bullet from her thigh and scab over the hole. The whole process itched quite a bit, but it was much better than feeling the crack in her bone with every movement and every shift of balance.

"So why did you really come after me?" she asked him when she had finished the potion. Her eyes fixed on his. Vincent didn't back down.

"You're strong, Light, but even your shell isn't impenetrable," he told her evenly. Light's eyebrow twitched, belying a whisper of annoyance.

"So you came out here to protect me from danger and then lecture me about it?"

Vincent shook his head. "No, that's not right. I came out here to set something straight with you." Light would have offered a rebuttal, or at least a sassy comeback, but she was cut off by the sudden pressure of Vincent's lips against her own. For a moment she held there, paralyzed in both body and mind, barely capable of registering the wiry strength of his arms as he pulled her closer, or the tickling brush of the ends of his hair against her skin. A warm tingle began building in her belly and quickly spread through her limbs to her hands and feet; not an unpleasant feeling, but a little jarring in its sheer novelty. After what seemed an unending moment of tense hesitation bordering on panic, her arms lifted and wrapped around his neck, and her lips opened to welcome him in. That tingling feeling grew stronger, seemed to evolve into what she could only describe as a muscular ache. The anger that had built inside of her, that empty void seeded by the thought of losing him, they both melted away as she relinquished herself to the moment. What replaced those poisonous feelings, Light could not have said. No word seemed to be the correct word, but perhaps 'satisfaction' hit closest to the mark. The ache in her belly intensified to just below the point of pain and extended down into her legs. Something vindictive inside her hoped Vincent was experiencing a similar bittersweet almost-pain. She needn't have worried on that score.

Vincent was indeed in the middle of a similar experience, but recognizing it for what it was, he was in no hurry to make it go away. He would never have willingly released Light from that burning kiss, but he discovered after a while that he needed to breathe. Holding onto Light as he did seemed to have shut off the better half of his brain, and the idea of kissing her with his mouth and breathing through his nose was utterly beyond his comprehension. Reluctantly, as though becoming lightheaded and passing out were far preferable to separation from her, Vincent finally pulled away.

When they had broken apart and got their chance to breathe unimpeded, Light leaned her head upon his shoulder. The woolen texture of that mantle was comforting against her cheek, one item of familiarity in a situation otherwise utterly new to her. Upon feeling that texture she was filled with the same sense of peace that she noticed in her dream of the beachside fireworks, in the moment she had leaned back upon dream-Vincent's chest. A small smile picked up the edges of her lips when she remembered that a chocobo named Nuggets was somewhere nearby. She would have been content to remain there against that woolen mantle, with the mildly scratchy texture upon her cheek and the scent of his skin and sweat all around her, but the man himself stole her attention when he bowed his head so his mouth was beside her ear.

"I followed you here to tell you that I love you," he whispered to her. Her heart skipped at least one beat as she held on to those words every bit as surely as she held onto the man with her arms. She knew her answer in her heart well before that answer formed coherent words in her mind.

"I love you too, Vincent," she purred back, without raising her head from his shoulder. A hint of a chuckle escaped him.

"I figured as much," he answered. Confused, Light pushed away from him just far enough to shoot him a perplexed look. Again he made that sound that must have been a chuckle. "I've never heard you talk so much at one time, not about feelings, anyway."

Embarrassed, Light laughed nervously and cast her eyes down. "You heard all of that then?"

Vincent's fingers caught her under the chin and gently raised her face up to look him in the eyes. He was smiling. "Almost all. I might have missed the beginning."

"So I guess I don't have to repeat all those apologies?" a hint of mischief had crept into her voice. Vincent shook his head in response.

"No, but I think it's time I offered a few of my own," he began before Light could stop him. "I should have told you the truth, and I shouldn't have lost control at all, but most of all I'm sorry I made you feel betrayed, and thank you, thank you for giving me that clue about where you were going. Thank you for trusting me enough to fight beside me and not against me."

Light extricated herself from one of his arms, so that she could hold his right hand in both of hers. "With or without the powers of Chaos, there is no one I would rather have at my side in battle than you." That was the simple truth. She was no longer bound to the service of a dead goddess, after all, and if it served ultimate good, then she would fight beside him, would fight beside Chaos itself, as long as the world decided to keep throwing enemies at them.

They shared another kiss, less shocking and more enjoyable than the last, and then Vincent suggested that they get out of there before Tifa sent out a search party. Light readily agreed to this, and together they stepped out of Lucrecia's bloodstained cave into the starlit mountain night. Nuggets had returned and was scratching for bugs not ten feet from where Fenrir was parked.

"Thank you, Light," Vincent said softly, though his gaze remained fixed on the heavens. He turned toward her and pressed a simple kiss to her forehead, through her bangs, then once again faced outward.

He knew she was waiting patiently for him to elaborate on his vague 'thank you.' Inside, he felt like a jumble of thoughts and emotions and he wasn't sure how to put into words exactly what she had done for him. But he tried. It might have come off more like a useless ramble but he tried. "You know, if you hadn't given me that potion and Phoenix Down, Chaos wouldn't have let me really die, but it would have taken a long time to fully recover. That's how I think of having you in my life, Light. Sure, I probably would make it through, no harm done, but that's no real way to live, and with you around I feel so much more alive, and so much sooner. You force me to come out of a darkness of my own making and walk in the light. You said you were meant to wait for me, and I can't tell you how..." here he paused to take a breath, "my very life was saved, because you were waiting for me."


	12. Epilogue

Light padded into the room as stealthily as possible. She winced at the barely audible sound of the hardwood floor sticking to her bare feet, but she knew he wouldn't hear her. When Vincent was asleep, Vincent was fast asleep, as dead to the world as most actual dead people.

Even knowing this, she still screwed her face up in annoyance at the creak of the boxspring as she sat down on the empty side of the queen-size mattress. Her worry was entirely misplaced, for the sleeping man gave no indication he heard her; he just breathed in deep and let it out. The exhale caused some of his hair to flutter out away from his face, but it quickly returned to its place as he breathed in again. He was laying on his side facing toward where Light sat, with one arm tucked under the pillow under his head. His other hand was wrapped around the edge of the comforter, which he had pulled nearly up to his chin. Only his head, arm, and hand remained open to the air. The purple duvet really brought out the gold in the undertones of his olive skin, Light thought appreciatively, not for the first time, and likely not for the last.

It was something of a marvel to her that in eight years together his skin had not changed at all. It had never significantly changed color, or texture, had never lost even the smallest amount of elasticity. No matter what scrape he got himself into his skin never so much as scarred over.

Not like her skin, Light thought with a small amount of discomfort. True, she did not show any signs of aging – one of the benefits of being the chosen one of a goddess, she figured – no wrinkles or odd discolorations. But she didn't have Vincent's ability to heal without scarring, as she learned the hard way six years ago. Light passed an inaudible sigh through her lips and put one hand on her belly. Without really thinking about it, she pushed the edge of her blouse up with her thumb, and moved the waistband of her skirt down with her other fingers, just enough to see the vertical white lines that ran up and down her abdomen. Stretch marks. Luckily, here on her belly was the only place they were readily visible, though she knew a few smaller ones existed on the insides of her thighs and the edges of her breasts. She wished she could erase those unsightly scars, but she wouldn't have traded the event that caused them for all the world. No amount of flawless skin was worth the life of their son.

Light's stealthy entrance had been for the purpose of glimpsing Vincent's adorable sleeping face, with his calm brows and little stream of drool, but now she had seen it, and it was time to get him out of bed. The routine was pretty simple: Light would gently shake his shoulder and tell him to get up, Vincent would eventually wake up just enough to groan and slide his arm under the blanket, whereupon there would be nothing to stop Light from grabbing said blanket and wrenching it down to his hips. The sudden cool air would wake him up and he would be surly just until his vision cleared and he met Light's eyes. She would kiss him good morning and then coerce him into making breakfast with her, because there were some things that even strong, responsible, badass Sergeant Lightning couldn't handle doing on her own.

Her plan went swimmingly until the part where she pulled down the blanket. Vincent, suddenly cold, grasped helplessly for his missing comforter, and not finding it, had settled for the next nearest source of heat. That's how Light found herself helplessly pinned to her husband's chest by two deceptively strong arms, and Vincent himself, quite content with the new status quo, began falling back to sleep.

"Of all the mornings to pull a stunt like this..." Light reprimanded, but the anger was halfhearted at best. It was impossible to stay angry with a man who, in the first place had full possession of her heart, and in the second place was still drooling on his pillow. "Vincent, really, it's the ...oof...okay, now you're just squishing my lungs, come on...better...as I was saying, it's Hope's first day of school, and I want us to have a proper family breakfast together before he goes..."

Vincent's eyes fluttered a bit at the mention of their son. He started forcing himself to wake up. Light had been counting on that: Vincent had few weaknesses that were also motivations, but the biggest, strongest, most endeared to his heart was Hope. He'd do anything for his little buckaroo, even wake up early in the morning – he actually called him 'buckaroo'; Light was pretty sure that reference had something to do with an unruly chocobo, but she hadn't gotten around to asking him about it.

His dark eyes finally opened for good and he turned his head to look down at his wife, still pinned against his chest. "You and your son will be the death of me," he muttered to her.

"You can't die, so what's there to worry about?" She teased back as she squirmed forward just enough drop a kiss on the end of his nose.

The doorbell rang. Light pushed herself up from the bed and told Vincent to get dressed while she answered it. He sighed his acquiescence and tried not to be too obvious about watching the feminine sway of Light's hips as she left their bedroom. Another sigh escaped him while he flopped out of bed and stumbled to the closet to find a shirt.

Meanwhile, Light opened the front door to none other than Marlene.

"Morning!" the girl said cheerily. Light immediately felt the smile growing on her face and stepped aside to let Marlene in.

It struck Light again how much had changed in eight years. Nowhere was it clearer than in Marlene: when they met, she had been but a girl of seven, strong for her size but still so small. Eight years had seen that girl grow into a sturdy woman, built not unlike Tifa, but taller, taller than Light herself. Marlene was only fifteen now, but she was probably full-grown.

Then again, some things really hadn't changed: Marlene might have gotten bigger, but she was still every bit the sweetheart she had always been, still a sassy little spitfire when she wanted to be, still deeply perceptive without trying to be. Adopted or not, she was obviously her father's daughter, and even though Barret still spent a lot of time away due to work, there was still nothing in the world that lit up either of their faces like being reunited after a long absence.

"Good morning, Marlene. You're a little early; he's not ready yet," Light gestured in the direction of the stairs. Marlene had been attending the newly-built middle school for the past two years, and this year she would be starting high school. Since all the new schools were right next to each other, she had offered to take Hope with her on his first day.

"Oh, that's okay, I was hoping I would be early actually," the young woman beamed. "Nothin's more important than a good breakfast on the first day of school, and since you hate cooking I thought I'd come over and help out."

Light didn't try to stop herself from giving Marlene a much-deserved hug. "You are a lifesaver." They walked into the kitchen together. Marlene approached the fridge, but before she could get to it the room went dark as a giant chocobo head appeared in the window. Nuggets warked excitedly from the backyard at the sight of the two women.

"Oh, calm down, silly bird, I'll get your breakfast in just a minute!" Light waved her hand dismissively at the window. Nuggets tilted his head in confusion. "At least there's one kind of breakfast I know how to make," she said to Marlene with a shrug. Marlene just laughed.

"You get him squared away, and I'll start on this. You have a wire whisk now, right?" Marlene called out as Light was heading for the backyard.

"A wire what?" came her reply from the back door.

Marlene sighed and started opening drawers. "Ah ha!" she cried as she found the whisk she had secretly stashed in the drawer about a year ago. It had never, not once, been used; she could tell by the fact that it was still in its original cardboard packaging.

Nuggets disappeared from the window when he heard Light entire the backyard. Suddenly that yard was alive with warks and kwehs and trills as the bird realized that his master was making her way toward the shed where the greens were kept. His wings flapped excitedly as Light pitched a generous helping of greens into his bowl.

"Here you go, you big nugget, don't you forget your protein-calcium supplement," she admonished as she poured the extra pellets over the greens. Nuggets was an old, old bird now, and his bones weren't quite what they used to be. She patted him lightly on the side. "Good boy, Nuggets," she praised him.

Then she went back inside, where she saw Marlene had taken over the entire kitchen. The girl was so intent and so hard at work that she didn't even notice Light's entrance.

"Need any help?" Light asked, even though she knew the answer.

"Nope, I got it all under control!" Marlene answered with a smile. She had found an apron and it was just as well: there was flour everywhere, on Marlene's hands, on the counter, in the mixing bowl, _everywhere._

"What are you making, pancakes?" the pink-haired woman asked, incredulously. Marlene's head bobbed as she nodded.

"And eggs. How do you like yours?"

"Um, scrambled, usually," Light answered.

"Scrambleds, coming up!" the girl called out as she stirred the pancake batter.

"You know you don't have to go to all this trouble for us," Light reminded her. Marlene just flashed another smile.

"But I want to. I like cooking. You never liked cooking, and Vincent's no five-star chef himself. Though between you and me, Aunt Light, you make a mean moonshine, better than Daddy's."

"When have you been sampling my moonshine?" Light asked sternly, but she was smiling. It was good to know there was some food-related thing that she didn't fail spectacularly at, was even _good _at making.

Marlene shrugged, a motion exaggerated by the fact that she had to raise the mixing bowl along with her shoulders. "Tifa lets me try a little so when I get to start taking and testing the deliveries I know what to look for. It's all for education, don't you worry."

"So you're serious about taking over the bar when Tifa decides to retire?" Light asked. The girl laughed.

"Tifa's _forever_ away from retiring. But she's going to train me up, let me work at 7th Heaven unless I find a different job somewhere, and when there's enough saved she's going to help me open my own bar. And you better be willing to supply my place with some of that shine of yours," she added with a wink.

"I don't know, there was that non-competition clause in Tifa's contract..." Light began. Marlene's eyed went wide. "I'm just joking, of course I'll help you any way you need. So what about Denzel? He's gotta be, what, twenty now? I haven't seen him in a while; what's he up to?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders again. "You know Cloud taught him a lot about repairing cars and building bikes. Well, Daddy gave him a job out at the oil fields, repairing their trucks and such, and I think they're starting to train him on repairing the drill rig itself. Denzel doesn't really talk to us much lately; most of what I hear about him is from Daddy. But, I guess he's happy out there, working hard, saving a lot, being...being Denzel. He's doing okay, I think."

"You sound like you miss him," Light observed. Marlene's eyes looked a little sad as she poured pancake batter into the preheated pan.

"I do miss him. He's like my brother, you know? But I guess even brothers need their time and space away from home."

"That they do, girl," Light agreed. "Hey, I'm going to run upstairs and make sure Hope's up and getting dressed, I'll be back in just a few minutes."

Marlene's smile returned. "Take your time, Aunt Light. These won't be done for a while anyway."

Light stopped outside of Hope's room and knocked. "Sweetie are you up?" she called through the door. No answer. She stepped into the little bedroom.

Hope had fallen back asleep, still wearing his dinosaur pajamas. His thick dark hair covered his face much like his father's did; Hope was even drooling like his father did. Light sighed and sat down on the edge of his bed. She shook her son very gently.

"Hope, honey, it's time to wake up."

"Unnngh, Mom do I have to?" the little boy asked groggily as he started waking up.

"Yes, you have to. You have school today."

"I don wanna go school," Hope complained.

Light laughed. "You know, a long time ago, your Auntie Serah used to say that whenever I would try to wake her up. She never, ever wanted to get up and go to school. It was all a big joke of course. She really loved going to school. It was just hard to _wake up_ for it first."

"I don wanna go school," the little boy repeated.

"Yes you do, and I think you're going to like school just as much as Auntie Serah did. Come on, time to get up. Put on your school clothes." She helped her son stand all the way up and change from his pajamas into his brand new uniform. Light tried not to cry a little while she finished up the last of the buttons and tucked the ends of Hope's shirt more snugly into his shorts. Despite her best efforts, when she looked at her son and took in the full image of his new uniform, when it hit her full-force just how fast her little boy was growing up, her eyes began to sting and she felt a wave of telltale heat rise in her neck and cheeks. Light sniffed. "Now, don't you look handsome." She brushed a piece of lint from his shoulder.

Hope squirmed and blushed. "Mooom," he complained. Light sniffed again.

"I tell it like it is, son. Oh, you know what? Marlene is here, she's gonna take you to school today."

The boy brightened up a bit at that. He liked Marlene a lot. She was pretty and nice and she smiled all the time. Marlene was like a big sister who was always willing to play and tease and help out but never did all the mean big sister stuff like pinch and tattle-tale.

"Come on, let's go downstairs and see her," Light offered. Little Hope nodded agreement and they went downstairs together – mostly together; Hope couldn't help jumping down the last two stairs and running into the kitchen to see Marlene. Light followed her son into the kitchen at a responsible adult walking pace just in time to hear Vincent's voice from the breakfast table:

"Hey there, little buckaroo, did you sleep well?"

Light shook her head. She _had_ to make better mental notes to herself about asking about the buckaroo thing.

"G'morning, Daddy, I slept great!" came Hope's answer as he seated himself at the table. "Can I have some juice, please?" Vincent smiled at his son and poured him a small glass.

"Don't drink too fast now or you'll be sick," he warned as Hope tried to down the whole glass at once. The father was glad he'd only poured a small glass.

"Hey Marlene, how fast can you drink juice?" Hope asked suddenly as Marlene carried a plate full of pancakes to the table. "Are those all for me?"

"As many as you want, buddy, it's your big day," Marlene answered him, but she chose not to address the juice question. She didn't really need to accidentally start a competition with the boy that might get him sick. The girl went back to the stove to babysit the scrambled eggs. When they reached a consistency that matched her exacting egg-related specifications, she brought them to the table where Hope was not-so-patiently waiting with his fork and knife grasped in each fist.

"Hope, remember: napkin goes in your lap," Light reminded him sternly.

"Mom, do I have to?"

"Yes."

"Dad, do I have to?"

Vincent didn't even look up from his book of crossword puzzles. "Son, what's the one rule of this house?"

The little boy puffed out his cheeks in a pout that only a child could manage without looking completely ridiculous. Only when both parents shot their best eyebrow-furrowing cross looks at him and Marlene stopped loading plates up with pancakes did little Hope feel compelled to answer. "When Mommy says something, no asking Dad to say something different."

"Or?" Vincent prompted, his eyebrow raised.

"Or vice versa," Hope finished in a mumble.

"So where does your napkin go?" Vincent followed up.

Hope pouted again and put his napkin in his lap. And then Vincent smiled. He said thank you. Suddenly Hope was filled with guilt. "Sorry I didn't listen, Mom," he apologized. To his relief, his mom smiled too.

"Apology accepted, sweetie. Thank you for fixing it."

"May I have some maple syrup, please?" Hope suddenly asked, and just like that, the last shred of tension in the room fell away. With a smile plastered on his face, Vincent passed the syrup bottle to Marlene, who poured a generous but not too crazy helping on Hope's flapjacks.

The rest of breakfast passed with no noticeable event. There was barely any chatter due to the necessity of chewing, though each one of the Valentines paused at least once to compliment Marlene on her top-notch cooking and thank her again for having made breakfast in the first place. Marlene herself tried to be humble through all this praise, insist that it was her pleasure and she was just glad to be able to spend time with them, but toward the end she couldn't help herself and she replied with, "I know, I'm awesome."

To which the Valentines heartily agreed.

"Is there enough time to clean up before we have to go?" Marlene asked as they were finishing up. She looked frantically up at the clock on the wall. Light waved her hand.

"Don't worry about clean-up. You've done more than enough. We'll handle the clean-up while you and Hope get to school." Her hand had been gesturing, indicating herself and Vincent as the cleaners-up.

"Wait, we?" asked Vincent in feigned alarm.

"Don't make me hurt you, Valentine," Light warned him with a poisonously sweet smile.

"I would never dream of it, Mrs. Valentine," he responded in kind.

Since she was at an angle that Hope and Marlene wouldn't see, Light went ahead and made a face at her husband before she turned back to make sure Hope had his backpack and his jacket.

"Remember to hold Marlene's hand on the way," she told the little boy. She sniffed and tried to blink away the returning sting in her eyes. "Remember to look both ways before crossing the street, okay? Remember to play nice and don't hit anyone on the playground."

"Mom, it's okay, I know," Hope reassured her. "I can do this."

A tear escaped and started rolling down Light's cheek. "I know you can, sweetie." She lowered herself to her knees and pulled her baby boy into a tight hug. He hugged back.

"I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, Hope." She released him and held him out at arm's length. "Have a good day at school."

"I will! Bye Mommy, bye Daddy!" Hope gave a child's imitation of a salute and then took Marlene's hand. Marlene didn't say anything, but she gave Light a look that told her not to worry. All too soon for Light's sensibilities, the two kids disappeared out the front door onto the sidewalk. Light didn't stand up right away; it was as though she was paralyzed, anxious about separation from her precious baby, sternly forcing herself to remember that Hope wasn't a baby anymore. And Marlene would be with him; she would never let anything happen to him. Light trusted that girl completely. Rationally, she knew there was nothing to be anxious about.

Even so, it was hard to let go.

Vincent appeared at her side. Light finally picked herself up off the ground and leaned on her husband's shoulder.

"You know he'll be okay," Vincent offered reassuringly.

"Of course he will," Light agreed as she wiped her tear away. "He's got that stubborn Valentine attitude; nothing gets him down for long."

He looked over at her skeptically. "You think he gets that from _my_ side? No, no; our boy got his good looks from me, but that stubborn-ness," he paused to plant a kiss on Light's forehead, "and that fighting spirit, that's all Farron. And all that sweetness buried under the spunk," he paused again and draped his arm on Light's shoulders, "I think he got that from those Lockharts and Wallaces."

Light laughed. "I swear he's got more of Tifa in him than either of us. But you know...sometimes I look at him and all I can see is Serah. He's just like she was at his age."

Vincent's lazily draped arm shifted until he was all but hugging Light. "I've heard it said that children act more like their aunts and uncles than like their parents."

"Serah's never been here to model behavior for him," Light pointed out.

"No, but Tifa has. And Tifa reminds you of Serah."

"When did I say that?"

Vincent's mouth quirked up at the corners into a smirk. "You sometimes talk in your sleep." Light gaped at him open-mouthed. "A couple times a month you'll say things about how 'Mom and Dad are coming home so you need to help clean the house up', but then you'll say Tifa's name. Or you'll be talking to Serah about a delivery for the bar."

Light shook her head. "They do get switched around in my dreams sometimes. In the worst ones, when I feel sad or defeated, one of them will show up and say 'come on, sis, no giving up!' and it doesn't even matter which one says it because it's something that both of them _would_ say. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot in my dreams."

"Increasingly, lately, if your sleep talk is any indication," Vincent observed. Light blushed a little and tried to shrug it off.

"Just stress, probably. Getting all the paperwork and school supply shopping done for Hope, and Nuggets's health problems, and my last batch of that moonshine must have gotten a bad bacteria in it, and—"

Vincent silenced her with a crushing hug that lasted for a good solid minute. After that, he only loosened his grip enough to plant a proper kiss on her. He knew he had done well when he felt her smile under his lips. The way she smiled like that in mid-kiss was one of his top five favorite things about her mouth. It took quite a bit of willpower to pull away enough to speak.

"I know, Light. The last few weeks have been as hard for you as they get without introducing a new Planet-threatening villain." His hand came up to wind his fingers into her wavy pink hair. "And that's why you don't get to stress about anything today. I'll be cleaning up the kitchen, and brushing down Nuggets, and the most you're allowed to do is supervise."

"Is that an order?" Light challenged, though her voice was a playful tease.

"Think of it as more of a dare," Vincent countered in as similar a tone as his voice would allow.

"Challenge accepted."

Vincent was true to his word; he would not allow Light to lift a finger to help with the chores. If there was a tool or a detergent he couldn't find, she was allowed to direct him to its location, but she was not allowed to lift, scrub, fetch, toss, or otherwise handle or utilize anything related to the cleaning process. At first it made her uneasy, watching her husband work while she did nothing. After a while she realized that Vincent held absolutely no resentment toward her for not helping, and in fact was most cheery when she kept to her end of the bargain and simply talked the time away while he made the kitchen sparkle and Nuggets's feathers shine.

"By the way," Vincent started in as he was washing his hands of excess chocobo feather oils, "Remember that troupe we saw performing _LOVELESS_ on our first date?"

Light leaned up against the gleaming counter-top. "How could I forget? Not my favorite date, but definitely my favorite show."

"Well," Vincent began, but then suddenly caught himself. "Wait, not your favorite? Then which one was your favorite?" Light paused to think.

"When we went back to our mountain near the Northern Crater."

Vincent chuckled. "The time I stocked our emergency backpack with nothing but fireworks and a bottle of wine?"

"That's the one. I've said it before and I'll say it again: fireworks over snow are much prettier than fireworks on the beach. The colors reflect really well off all the white."

"I'll keep that in mind for the future," he answered as his chuckles died down.

"But anyway what were you saying about the _LOVELESS_ troupe?" she brought the topic back around. Vincent paused as if trying to remember what he was about to say before he got sidetracked.

"Oh, right. That troupe is back in town, I don't know if you've noticed the fliers around the neighborhood."

"I hadn't noticed."

"That's alright, but here they are, and I was thinking we should go see their new show."

"Oh yeah? What's it called?"

"_I Want To Be Your Canary._"

Light's eyes lit up. "I've read that play! It's a classic, and such a beautiful, sad story." Her eyes took on a misty, dreamy quality.

"So, then, let's go. The show starts early enough, we can take Hope with us and we can go tonight." He sounded much more excited about the prospect than he usually did about this sort of event. Maybe he was feeding off of his wife's love for the story, or maybe he just really liked the troupe.

"Do you think Hope's old enough to handle it?" Light suddenly switched into concerned mom mode. Vincent just shrugged.

"It would probably do him good to be exposed to great classic literature and theater from a young age. Maybe he'll grow up into a classy gentleman."

Light raised her eyebrow. "Maybe you're right. But I swear, if he ever grows a twirly mustache I am blaming you and your young-age high-brow culture exposure."

Vincent solemnly raised his right hand and closed his eyes. "There will be no twirly mustaches from him as long as he lives under my roof. But once he's an adult with his own place and his own life, I absolve myself of responsibility for his facial hair."

"I can accept those terms," Light answered with equal solemnity.

Marlene walked Hope home after school, and both Light and Vincent were surprised to see a second little boy following Hope into the house.

"Hey, buddy, how was school?" Vincent asked when he saw the group in the entryway. "Who's your friend?"

"Hi Dad, school was good, my teacher is really nice, this is Alex."

"Alex, huh? Nice to meet you, Alex, I'm Hope's Dad." He nodded to the bow, who reflexively bowed back.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Valentine," the boy stammered. He was a stocky lad with hair of a nondescript medium brown and extraordinarily bright blue eyes, and a curious bruise on his jawline.

Light entered then and and introduced herself to Hope's new friend. Then she asked how they met.

"Some boys made fun of me at lunch," Hope launched into the story. "They laughed at me for having a girly name. Then I punched some of them in the face."

"Hope!" Light admonished in her best Mom voice.

"But it was so cool, Mrs. Valentine, like he just dropped three boys in three punches!" Alex chimed in. "And, I mean, I was one of them. But I was wrong to laugh at Hope and I already said sorry, I was wrong to think he wasn't cool just because his name isn't really manly. Hope's actually really, really cool!"

"Hope, I'm glad you made a friend and everything, but you know you can't just hit people just because they make you mad."

"I won't do it again," the boy answered in his most contrite-sounding voice, with a convincing and sheepish hang of his head.

"He won't need to ever again, now that everyone knows he's a total _badass_!" cried Alex. "Oops, I mean, he's a total...awesome cool guy and stuff!"

Vincent and Light exchanged looks. To call out Alex's language or not? He caught himself and corrected, so that was a point in his favor. Plus, if he was inclined to talk that way in general, one scolding from his new friend's parents wouldn't change that, and could potentially cost Hope his new friend.

And anyway, it's not like they could call him out on the grounds that his statement was inaccurate. Hope was descended from a great and glorious legacy of badassery.

They made a few minutes worth of small talk with Hope's new friend and then mentioned the plan to go to the theater. Hope wasn't interested in seeing a play, not now that he had a friend in his peer group, but Marlene offered to babysit if the two adults wanted to go to the theater and leave the kids at home.

"Tifa doesn't schedule me to work school nights unless it's an emergency, so I'm completely free," Marlene explained. "I'd be happy to watch Hope and Alex both if it's okay with his parents."

"Marlene, honestly, what in the world would I do without you?" Light asked, though most of the question was muffled against Marlene's hair, as she was hugging the girl very tightly.

"You wouldn't see nearly as many plays," Marlene suggested.

"I would have to worry about twirly mustaches!" Light cried, again, mostly into the girl's hair.

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Okay, Aunt Light. Hey, if you're going to the theater, shouldn't you be going to get ready?"

"Right." Light disengaged from the hug, thanked Marlene again, and ran upstairs to jump in the shower.

"So, what are you going to go see?" Marlene asked Vincent, who was still standing there.

"_I Want To Be Your Canary_," he answered. Exactly as Light's had, Marlene's eyes lit up.

"Oooooh, that's supposed to be a really good one. Lucky!"

"That's what I've heard," Vincent said with a smile.

~~~~~~~~~~

_Final note from the author:_

_Thank you for reading "Because you were waiting". Thank you to everyone who wrote reviews. Your criticisms made me think harder about where and how to take the story, and your praises gave me the ego boost to keep going. Thank you to my friends who proofread my first chapter before it was ever published to make sure I wasn't throwing character traits off of bridges. Thank you to whomever(s) put proper, labeled world maps on the Final Fantasy wiki. Seriously, referring to those suckers made the entire process that much easier._

_Thank you to the readers who have joined the ship of Lightning x Vincent, or as I like to call it: Lincent. Welcome aboard. Galley's on the Crew Deck, make sure you wear proper gloves and hats if you venture into the Engineering Deck. Don't open the airlock without clearance._

_Ship metaphors aside, really, I appreciate every time someone said to me something to the effect of "I didn't think about this pairing before but I like it!" and every time, it brought (still brings) a smile to my face._

_Unfortunately, this story is now at its close. As my good friend Kuja might put it, the curtain has fallen and it is time to strike the stage. In the future I would love to write more of The Adventures of Vincent and Lightning for you all, but for the moment I think I will take a break and a breather. Maybe work on one of the other crossovers crawling around in my head. Maybe that one about Dragon Age. My name is Blood-Magic after all, I mean, it would be a shame to have a Dragon Age-y pen name and no actual Dragon Age stories, right? But I'm getting a little off-subject._

_Thank you again, everyone, I hope to see you again in the Lincent world soon. *sounds of an airship powering up* But now I must go; my coffee needs me. *take off: whoosh!*_


End file.
